Better Late Than Never
Today is Saturday, 4 August 2007.
This column was meant to appear on 2 August; I thought I had posted it, but hadn't:
Another “dreary date-in-time shtick”, as a recent commenter on this column said.
And precisely what’s the problem with living in history, given that history is living with us? Or, more precisely, that we are constantly living history?
Sure, there’s that insane-egotistical notion that America is “The New World”, and left all that dreary Europeanism behind on the shores of the Old World, and was born sinless and perfect on the shores of Virginia and Massachusetts.
That myth doesn’t quite account for the genocide of Native Americans and African Americans, which seems very Old World. Note that the Reagan-BushOne regime bilked the American taxpayers out of more than $3 billion to finance Saddam Hussein’s dreams of conquest (1981-1988). The Reagan-BushOne regime also conned many Sunni-dominated Persian Gulf nations into giving Iraq grants and loans to kill Shiites in Iran. (Some of our dollars bought poison gas to kill Iranians and Kurds.)
When the dictatorship in Kuwait demanded repayment of some loans, S. Hussein used it as a pretext to invade and conquer Kuwait, ON THIS DATE in 1990 [your dreary date-in-time shtick for today], after the bumbling BushOne regime told Hussein, “Whatever”. (Note that Iraq had long claimed Kuwait was rightfully part of its territory, a claim which the Eisenhower regime had supported. Don’t believe it? As the immortal Casey Stengel said, “You could look it up”.)
This is not “negativity”, this is not whining: this is reality for which we are among those responsible. It is in “dreary” (what a pathetic term) history that we live and move and have our being.
This column was meant to appear on 2 August; I thought I had posted it, but hadn't:
Another “dreary date-in-time shtick”, as a recent commenter on this column said.
And precisely what’s the problem with living in history, given that history is living with us? Or, more precisely, that we are constantly living history?
Sure, there’s that insane-egotistical notion that America is “The New World”, and left all that dreary Europeanism behind on the shores of the Old World, and was born sinless and perfect on the shores of Virginia and Massachusetts.
That myth doesn’t quite account for the genocide of Native Americans and African Americans, which seems very Old World. Note that the Reagan-BushOne regime bilked the American taxpayers out of more than $3 billion to finance Saddam Hussein’s dreams of conquest (1981-1988). The Reagan-BushOne regime also conned many Sunni-dominated Persian Gulf nations into giving Iraq grants and loans to kill Shiites in Iran. (Some of our dollars bought poison gas to kill Iranians and Kurds.)
When the dictatorship in Kuwait demanded repayment of some loans, S. Hussein used it as a pretext to invade and conquer Kuwait, ON THIS DATE in 1990 [your dreary date-in-time shtick for today], after the bumbling BushOne regime told Hussein, “Whatever”. (Note that Iraq had long claimed Kuwait was rightfully part of its territory, a claim which the Eisenhower regime had supported. Don’t believe it? As the immortal Casey Stengel said, “You could look it up”.)
This is not “negativity”, this is not whining: this is reality for which we are among those responsible. It is in “dreary” (what a pathetic term) history that we live and move and have our being.
posted by HH at 6:58 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home