'Deskundigen' 70

A form of waterboarding was used in the Spanish Inquisition, in the name of Jesus Christ.

Waterboarding in the enlightened European Middle Ages.

USA soldiers were prosecuted for waterboarding Vietcong soldiers during the Vietnam War (known in Vietnam as the US War).

Het gevoel dat ze uitzonderlijk zijn, drijft ze voort. Als je invloed en macht wilt hebben, moet je groots zijn. Dat is iets wat we in Europa van ze kunnen leren.

Geert Mak op 22 augustus 2012 bij nu.nl

http://www.nu.nl/boek/2890304/geert-mak-ziet-amerika-straks-sterker-dan-europa.html

The U.S. military’s use of waterboarding began during the Philippine-American War. Euphemistically called the ‘water cure,’ it was said to be a form of torture the U.S. ‘inhereted’ from the Spanish. They had used it since the Inquisition. In his 1902 essay ‘A Defense of General Funston,’ Mark Twain wrote:

Funston’s example has bred many inmitators, and many ghastly additions to our history: the torturing of Filipinos by the awful ‘water-cure,’ for instance, to make them confess – what? Truth? Or lies? How can one know which it is they are telling? For under unendurable pain a man confesses anything that is required of him, true or false, and his evidence is worthless…

The Bush administration often denies imperial ambitions by claiming that it’s goal is ‘Iraq for the Iraqis.’ That is a paraphrase of ‘the Philippines for the Filipinos,’ a statement William H. Taft (Amerikaanse president van 1909-1913 svh) often made to defuse criticism of U.S. Imperial policy while he was the first U.S. Governor-General of the Philippines.

Jim Zwick. Confronting Imperialism. 2007.

Ondanks de macht van de elite en de volgzame mainstream is er ook in de VS altijd een gemarginaliseerde tegenbeweging geweest, burgers die zich verzetten tegen Mak’s adagium dat  ‘als je invloed en macht wilt hebben, je groots [moet] zijn… iets wat we in Europa van ze kunnen leren.’ Dit is ook nog eens een verkeerde voorstelling van zaken, want zoals degenen die de imperialistische politiek van de VS met klem afwezen, was het eerder andersom en immiteerde de VS juist de koloniale terreur van Europa. En dat maakten humanistische Amerikanen in woord en geschrift duidelijk, tot grote ergernis van de elite en haar politici die voortgedreven werden en nog steeds voortgedreven worden door ‘het gevoel dat ze uitzonderlijk zijn,’ zoals valt op te maken uit de uitspraak van president Obama

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.

Elk volk dat over een imperium heerst of heeft geheerst is per definitie ervan overtuigd anders dan alle anderen volkeren te zijn, van de Grieken tot de Britten en nu de Amerikanen. Dat spreekt voor zich, zonder dat geloof zouden de imperialisten zich nooit kunnen legitimeren, in de eerste plaats niet tegenover zichzelf. Vandaag de dag wordt de zaak iets diplomatieker verkocht aangezien Obama de NAVO nodig heeft om met name geweld tegen olierijke landen te legitimeren, zoals de opmerkzame waarnemer maar al te goed begreep toen in 2010 de Amerikaanse president verklaarde dat

I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we create partnerships because we can't solve these problems alone.

Deze bewoordingen werden dan ook door The Washington Post toegejuicht omdat ze ze een ‘Pragmatic Tone’ uitstraalden die veel effectiever was dan de contraproductieve boertige toon van Bush junior. Maar achter Obama’s ‘tone’ gaat hetzelfde gewelddadige imperialisme schuil als dat van meer dan een eeuw eerder. Daartegen richtte zich de eerste actie van de Anti-Imperialist League door in 1898 een petitie te verzenden aan de Senaat  om te protesteren

against any extension of the sovereignty of the United States over the Philippine Islands, in any event, or other foreign territory, without the free consent of the people thereof, believing such action would be dangerous to the Republic, wasteful of its resources, in violation of constitutional principles, and fraught with moral and physical evils to our people.

Het hielp allemaal niet, ook omdat president McKinley claimde te handelen op grond van een ‘electoral mandate,’ de altijd zwijgende meerderheid. De Amerikaanse wetenschapper Jim Zwick wees in Confronting Imperialism. Essays on Mark Twain and the Anti-Imperialist League op een opmerkelijk feit. Hij schrijft dat

  

one of the points upon which there has been the most agreement in studies of the League is that there was little concern felt by American anti-imperialists about the Filipinos and, although both advocated Philippine independence, scant cooperation existed between the movements in the United States and the Philippines.

There are grounds for such an appraisal in the League’s repeated claim that its primary goal was the preservation of republican democracy within the United States. ‘Much as we abhor the war of “criminal aggression” in the Philippines, greatly as we regret that the blood of the Filipinos is on American hands, we more deeply resent the betrayal of American institutions at home,’ the League’s platform asserted. Quoting similar statements made at the first anti-imperialist mass meeting held in Boston in June 1898 and noting that the League’s constitution restricted membership to U.S. citizens, Maria C. Lanzar stressed that the League was founded ‘primarily for the good of the people of the United States rather than for that of the inhabitants of the Philippines.’

En ook het uitgebreide onderzoek van de Amerikaanse historicus, professor Robert L. Beisner ‘confirmed the proclivity of McKinley’s critics to lament imperialism’s impact only on Americans, rather than on Filipinos or Puerto Ricans,’ hetgeen Beisner tot de conclusie voerde dat zelfs de anti-imperialisten leiden aan een ‘parochialism of spirit’ dat nog steeds de anti-imperialistische beweging in de VS beinvloed door het bevorderen van ‘self-preoccupation without enhancing self-knowledge.’ Deze ‘bekrompenheid’ toont aan dat zelfs voor vooruitstrevende Amerikanen de zogenaamde Amerikaanse normen en waarden niet als universeel golden. Voor de meeste dissidenten was meteen duidelijk dat de prijs voor het hebben van een imperium te hoog zou zijn voor de toch al beperkte Amerikaanse democratie. Het was Mark Twain die dit als één van de eersten besefte, toen hij opmerkte dat ‘America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at home.’  Twain heeft gelijk gekregen dat imperialisme en democratie elkaar uitsluiten, zoals we aan de huidige situatie in de VS kunnen zien, waar een kleine elite haar rijkdom en macht blijft vergroten ten koste van de meerderheid en zeker ten koste van de meer dan 40 miljoen Amerikanen die onder de armoedegrens leven. De rijken worden daarbij gesteund door de opiniemakers in de mainstream media.  Een simpel voorbeeld. Tijdens de uitzending van Pauw en Witteman op 3 oktober 2012 over de Amerikaanse presidentsverkiezing vroeg Witteman zijn gasten het volgende:

Waarom is de armoede niet de topic van de campagne? 

De als ‘Amerika-deskundige’ aangekondigde Geert Mak reageerde onmiddellijk met de bewering dat de armoede 'onderhuids natuurlijk wel' degelijk een topic was. 'Bij Obama speelt het erg over het verdedigen van verworven rechten.'  Mak voegde hier zonder enige kennis van zaken aan toe dat Obama in zijn tweede termijn als president voor de slachtoffers van het kapitalisme zou opkomen. Maar de werkelijkheid is precies het tegenovergestelde. Obama wil bezuinigen. Op het Amerikaanse progressieve website Truthout  schrijft ‘Salvatore Babones, a senior lecturer in sociology and social policy at the University of Sydney in Australia and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, DC’:

In Washington, Secretary Duncan developed the $4.35 billion "Race to the Top" program to encourage states to privatize their schools. The funding was structured as a competition. All 50 states adopted the Race to the Top program in hopes of receiving scarce federal funding during a severe recession; only 12 actually received any grants. The tournament format was designed to ensure maximum institutional impact for the smallest possible investment.

It's not just in education policy that the Obama administration has pursued a broadly neoliberal, center-right agenda. For example, President Obama has taken no action to improve minimum wages or working conditions. The US federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, with no guaranteed sick days, holidays, or vacation time. The last increase was in 2009, under a law passed by the Bush administration in 2007. President Bush actually supported the increase - in combination with business tax cuts.

The federal minimum wage for restaurant staff (and others who might be expected to receive customer tips) is just $2.13 an hour, against which the value of meals provided by the employer can be deducted.

But of course President Obama's signature program is health care reform. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is proudly or derisively (depending which side you're on) known as Obamacare. America has long been the only rich country without universal health insurance. Obamacare is intended to extend health insurance coverage to all Americans.

What is Obamacare really? At its heart is a requirement that all Americans will have to buy health insurance, mainly from private, for-profit insurance companies. Insurance premiums will remain largely unregulated, subject to the single requirement that insurance companies will have to accept all applicants and not be allowed to turn away those with pre-existing conditions.

People who refuse to buy health insurance will be forced to pay a $695 penalty. Given that the cost of the most basic private health insurance in the United States is far greater than this, many people are likely to remain uninsured even after Obamacare is fully implemented in 2014.

What's more, starting in 2017 states will essentially be able to opt out of Obamacare if they present an alternative plan that is approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. This requires no further action by Congress. So if the next US president is a Republican, expect every Republican-controlled state to opt out of universal healthcare as soon as that president is inaugurated.

And then there's foreign policy. The Obama administration foreign policy is slightly to the left of ... Dick Cheney. The Obama administration embraces targeted assassination and maintains a kill list - sorry, ‘disposition matrix’ - of people it considers fair game for drone attacks. The Obama administration embraces the use of torture on people in US custody (with the sole specific exclusion of waterboarding). The Obama administration embraces the infliction of national collective punishment to induce civilian populations to overthrow their governments.

The Obama administration maintains a gulag archipelago of secret CIA prisons around the world, and automatically as a matter of policy classifies as ‘enemy combatants’ any adolescent or adult male civilians who are killed in its military operations on the logic that if they were killed, they must have been combatants.

Non-Americans who applaud the Obama administration on the very limited basis that it hasn't invaded any other countries (yet) might consider these facts before forming their opinions. For a balanced view of the American foreign policy consensus, one need only listen to the October 22, 2012 third US presidential debate. Democrats are no doves.  http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13567-there-is-no-american-left

En op 30 december 2012 berichtte Kevin Zeese ‘co-director of Its Our Economy, an attorney who has been a political activist since graduating from George Washington Law School in 1980.  He works on peace, economic justice, criminal law reform and reviving American democracy’:

The fiscal cliff is a self-created bi-partisan drama that demonstrates the failure of traditional politics and the need for mobilized resistance and a new independent poltical movement. The mass media and operatives from the Democratic and Republican parties have raised all sorts of imagined fears to provide cover to unnecessary cuts to health, retirement and social programs, while marginally increasing taxes on the wealthiest. But watch out, this is really only the set-up for the payback to big business interests that bankrolled the 2012 elections.

President Obama is on track to be the first Democratic president to cut Social Security benefits at a time when pensions are disappearing and it is the primary source of income for elderly Americans. Social Security does not add to the deficit as it has a $2.7 trillion surplus, expected to rise to $3.7 trillion according to the Social Security Trustees. Cuts to Medicare and Medicaid are also on the table; no doubt other safety net programs will also be cut.

While Democrats like to blame Speaker Boehner, and he and the Republicans deserve their share of bi-partisan blame, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is cheering on the retirement cuts saying they would ‘strengthen’ the program. Pelosi, who keeps her leadership by raising millions from the wealthy has raised $328 million since becoming leader including $85 million in the 2012, seems out of touch with how retired Americans teeter on the verge of poverty. In fact, while Social Security keeps 21 million out of poverty, the Census Bureau reports that in the last decade there has been a 78% increase in Americans over 60 facing the threat of hunger and one in six seniors live in poverty. The Social Security Administration reports projected poverty rates are quite sensitive to the assumption that benefits are not further reduced. The proposal made by Obama and endorsed by Pelosi (and other leading ‘progressive’ Democrats) as strengthening would noticeably reduce benefits of retirees – a person who retired at 65 in 2000, if they live to 92 will have one month cut annually as a result.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/13619-more-theft-under-the-guise-of-the-fiscal-cliff

De Amerikaanse Nobelprijswinnaar Economie, Paul Krugman, concludeerde dan ook op 31 december 2012 in de New York Times:

OK, now for the really bad news. Anyone looking at these negotiations, especially given Obama’s previous behavior, can’t help but reach one main conclusion: whenever the president says that there’s an issue on which he absolutely, positively won’t give ground, you can count on him, you know, giving way — and soon, too. The idea that you should only make promises and threats you intend to make good on doesn’t seem to be one that this particular president can grasp.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/conceder-in-chief-2/

En de Huffington Post berichtte op 2 januari 2012:

Congress passed a fiscal cliff deal negotiated by Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday, which extends the Bush tax cuts for couples' incomes below $450,000 and individuals' incomes below $400,000. This broke with Obama's promise not to extend the Bush tax cuts on annual incomes above $250,000.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/02/paul-krugman-obama_n_2396285.html

Aangezien deze informatie door opiniemakers als Mak vanwege talloze opportunistische redenen niet verwerkt kan worden worden de feiten domweg verzwegen. Omdat Geert Mak ‘niet zonder hoop’ kan ‘Stan, dat klinkt misschien wat pathetisch, maar het is toch zo,’ blijft hij, in tegenstelling tot progressieve Amerikaanse intellectuelen de werkelijkheid bewust negeren. Zolang het intellectuele niveau in Nederland laag blijft kan Mak door middel van een omvangrijke marketing en packagingcampagne zich voordoen als een expert op het gebied van ‘Europa’ en ‘Amerika’ en kan hij zonder de Amerikaanse geschiedenis serieus bestudeerd te hebben beweren dat onder andere president Woodrow Wilson ‘de aanzet’ gaf ‘tot een hele reeks internationale instituten die, ondanks alle problemen, een begin van orde brachten in de mondiale politiek en economie.' 

Nu de werkelijkheid. Het was Woodrow Wilson die als politicus over de uitgangspunten van zijn buitenlandse  beleid verklaarde:

Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down … Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.

Dit expansionisme is gezien vanuit de visie van de blanke protestants-christelijke elite  inderdaad ‘een begin van orde in de mondiale politiek en economie,’ maar het moderne kolonialisme wordt door de talloze slachtoffers in ontwikkelingslanden gezien als onderdrukking, vernietiging van hun economie en diefstal van de eigen grondstoffen. In The Chosen Peoples schrijven de auteurs over Wilson:

By heritage as well ass belief, he was arguably as much of a white supremacist as Theodore Roosevelt (whose mother was raised in a slave-owning plantation family; her two brothers were Confederate naval officers). Wilson, who as president tolerated segregation in government agencies, was a Virginian whose father owned slaves; in one of his pre-presidential history books, he wrote that ‘in the heart of the South… domestic slaves were almost uniformly dealt with indulgently and even affectionately by their masters,’ and that ‘in the States where the negroes were most numerous, or their leaders most shrewd and unprincipled,’ Reconstruction produced ‘an extraordinary carnival of public crime.’

De ‘orde’ waarnaar Wilson streefde verschilde in niets van de eeuwenoude expansionistsche ‘orde,’ die alleen al in de VS naar schatting tenminste 7 miljoen indianen het leven kostte. Natuurlijk allemaal met ‘With God On Our Side’

Oh the history books tell it

They tell it so well

The cavalries charged

The Indians fell

The cavalries charged

The Indians died

Oh the country was young

With God on its side.

 

Of, om nogmaals uit The Chosen Peoples. America, Israel and the ordeals of Divine Election te citeren:

Throughout his life, Wilson was outspoken in public about his idea of divine mission. In a 1911 lecture on ‘The Bible and Progress,’ he proclaimed: ‘Nothing makes America great except her thoughts, except her ideals, except her acceptance of those standards of these [biblical] pages of revelation.’

During the 1912 presidential campaign, Wilson resorted to the language of divinity when he expressed confidence that America was ‘chosen, and prominently chosen, to show the way to the nations of the world how they shall walk in the paths of liberty,’ and in the same speech: ‘If I did not believe in Providence I would feel like a man going blindfolded through a haphazard world.’ It was during this same campaign that apocalyptic fervor swept away the Bull Moose candidate Theodore Roosevelt as well, with his famous declaration: ‘We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.’

En god is nog steeds de grote inspirator van de huidige generatie Amerikaanse presidenten, zoals ondermeer blijkt uit de uitspraak van George Bush in augustus 2003 toen hij in Sharm el-Sheikh verklaarde:

I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And, by God, I'm gonna do it.

Het gaat dus om protestants-christelijke ‘orde,’ waaruit ook de domineeszoon Geert Mak voortkomt, een ‘orde’ die onder allerlei lagen van moderniteit nog steeds verborgen ligt. Een westerse ‘orde’ die onontbeerlijk is  ‘als je invloed en macht wilt hebben,’ en daarom ‘moet je groots zijn. Dat is iets wat we in Europa van ze kunnen leren.’ De ervaring leert dat iemand geschoold in een calvinistische cultuur zich moeilijk iets anders kan voorstellen dan de blanke, protestants-christelijke orde die ideologisch wordt verkocht als ‘evenwicht tussen de verschillende machten, binnen Amerika en ook in de rest van de wereld.’  Men kent geen andere weg, zoals niet alleen de Amerikaanse politiek aantoont maar ook Geert Mak’s reisgids.

The salvation of the world… is certainly the prophetic conception. It was through the nation that the kingdom of God was to be set up in the world… All these glowing promises made by the old prophets, of the triumphs yet to be won for the kingdom of God in the world, are made to the nation and not to the church… In truth, the evangel which the divine love is seeking to proclaim to all the peoples, is a truth so large that it can only be adequately uttered by a nation’s voice,

aldus in 1909 de voorstaande Amerikaanse predikant Washington Gladden, één van de leiders van de Progressive Movement. En het maakt daarbij geen wezenlijk verschil uit of dit messianisme nu gebaseerd is op een of andere vage ‘hoop,’ of op een christelijk geloof dan wel op een of andere democratische ideologie of een combinatie van deze drie, het blijft imperialisme, gebaseerd op het diep gewortelde geloof beter te zijn dan alle anderen. Dat wil zeggen: beter, niet in wijsheid, maar in technologisch vermogen. Morgen meer daarover.