THE political stability given to Turkey by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has not served to lessen the intensity of the country’s ideological polarisation.
The AKP can justly claim credit for some successes: it has given the country 12 years of stable single-party government; its economic policies have turned Turkey into the world’s 17th and Europe’s sixth biggest economy, and it has tamed the military the way earlier Islamists led by Necmettin Erbekan had failed to.
In what was an intelligent move, Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly pledged loyalty to secularism and thus removed the raison d’être for the military to seize power when he ousted his mentor Erbekan to grab party leadership.
What the reaction in the army was when the AKP won the election the first time in 2002 is now coming to light as the Ergenekon trial proceeds. On Aug 2, Hilmi Ozkok, a former chief of the general staff, told a court trying hundreds of people — 40 serving generals among them — that the army wanted to send to the AKP government a veiled coup warning in the form of a ‘memorandum’. (The Turkish word ‘muhtira’ can also be translated as ‘ultimatum’.)
Hilmi found himself vulnerable. The general preceding him as chief of the general staff had opposed his nomination as army chief because he thought Hilmi would not be able to resist fundamentalism. When he finally became CGS, Hilmi sensed unpopularity when he discouraged fellow officers from thinking in terms of a coup. But he was so scared — he told the court — that he brought food from home because he feared poisoning.
Much before Hilmi stunned the nation, the army as far back as 2007 staged what came to be known as the ‘e-coup’ when it
warned the government on its website against Abdullah Gul’s appointment as president.
The situation since then has improved, with Erdogan having turned the powerful, army-led National Security Council into a consultative body headed by a civilian. But this governmental stability is not reflected in society, because even the diluted
secularism of the AKP’s philosophy is not acceptable to large segments of Turkish society.
This is a challenge for the AKP, not for the secular elements, because it is his espousal of the apparently incompatible strains in his philosophy that distinguishes Erdogan from Erbekan.
Two minor events need to be noted here. In a south-eastern town, a crowd attacked an Alevi home because its inmates had requested the neighbourhood drummer not to wake them up for sehri because they were going on a holiday the next day. The
drummer told others, and a crowd gathered and pelted the home with stones, burnt its stable and shouted, “No Alevi and no Kurds in our town”.
Also, last month, a security guard shouted at a woman and stopped her from boarding a ferry because she was carrying four sealed bottles of wine. It was Ramazan. The ferry firm later apologised. But the issue — relevant to Pakistan — was that the guard defied institutional discipline and acted on his own. On the other side of the ideological spectrum, the generals did not invite Erdogan to a national day reception last year.
Reducing the intensity of this social polarisation by democratic means is Erdogan’s main challenge. The trial of Kenan Evren and others responsible for the 1980 coup has been criticised by Erdogan himself. This revanchism could jeopardise Turkey’s otherwise commendable move towards democratic consolidation.
Suriye’ye kamyon kamyon nitrat gübresi götürülüyor Trucks bringing nitrate fertilizer bomb-making material to Syria (from Turkey)
Hatay’dan Suriye’ye kamyon kamyon nitrat gübresi götürüldüğü ortaya çıktı. Bölge kaynakları, nitrat gübresinin, bomba yapımında kullanılmak için götürüldüğünü vurguladı. Bölgede kullanımı yaygın olmadığı halde özellikle Reyhanlı’da nitrat gübresinin bayilerden çekildiği belirtiliyor. Ziraat odasında bir yetkili “Bu gübreler, tarımda kullanmak üzere stoklanıyor olabilir mi?” sorusunu, “Nitrat gübresi stoklanmaz. Beklediğinde niteliğinde kaybeder. Çiftçi zarar eder” diye yanıtladı. Esad yönetimine karşı eylemler gerçekleştiren paralı askerlerin ve muhaliflerin nitrat gübresini, Suriye’de bomba yapmakta kullandıkları bildirildi.
On the holiest day of the year you are deliberately killing your fellow Muslim believers. May Allah damn you to hell. In fact, Allah already has! Read your holy Koran you religious mongering merchants of murder!
— It is unlawful for a believer to kill another believer. Koran, 4:92.
— He that kills a believer by design shall burn in Hell forever. He shall incur the wrath of God, who will lay His curse upon him and prepare for him a mighty scourge.Koran, 4:93
— Shall I tell you who will receive a worse reward from God? Those whom God has cursed and with whom He has been angry, transforming them into apes and swine, and those who serve the devil. Koran, 5:60
How beautifully written the American Declaration of Independence. How stirring the claims pronounced by the Founding Fathers, “self evident” truths about equality and the endowment of rights by the deity, all dogmatically unassailable. Add to this heady nectar the assertion that “Laws of nature and of Nature’s God” sanction, and indeed entitle, the new country to rebel from tyrannous England and establish a new government. The rights of the people, indeed people everywhere, were dictated, not by government decree or any man, but by God. And America became one nation under God to whom schoolchildren in America daily pledge. Can there be any higher entitling authority?
With the righteousness of their actions derived from and affixed by the deity, America’s Founding Fathers double-stitched their assertion of independence from below, that is, from the people themselves. While governments are created and organized by men, the powers inherent in government are derived “from the consent of the governed.” And governments destructive to the natural and divine rights of man can be altered or even abolished by the people under its rule. In other words, the right of revolution is implicit in the right and responsibility of government. The reason by which the implication of liberty was enlarged to sanction the self-determination of a group appears in the Declaration of Independence. It proclaimed that men, free and equal, instituted government and consented to its powers in order to protect the inalienable natural rights with which their Creator had bestowed them.
Nature’s God had a clear purpose intuited the founding fathers. America was the fortunate child of a beneficent, protective deity, which shed grace and moral justification on the new land and on its governed, the second generation of God’s chosen people, the first being the Biblical Israelites. The late Professor Albert Weinberg of Johns Hopkins University, author of that magisterial work on American expansionism, Manifest Destiny, adds that “the first doctrine which reflected the nationalistic theology […] was that of God’s decree of independence.” [1] The Declaration of Independence also reflected the first governmental demonization of the American Indians. The freedoms given by God to the freshly minted Americans in their Declaration of Independence did not apply to “the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” [2] Thus the Indians were damned by God’s mouth, the same mouth that inspired the framers of the above cited document of freedom, primarily from the pen of Thomas Jefferson. In for a penny, in for a pound! Thus on July 4, 1776, the birth of the nation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the first war against terror was officially declared by the Continental Congress on behalf of themselves, the invading and occupying power, America, against the aboriginal inhabitants and primordial owners of the land of that appropriating new nation. And the “Indian Savages” remain condemned to this moment in the catalyzing document that launched the American republic. Frozen in time as “merciless” terrorists, Native Americans are marked by the original sin of the white man’s appropriation. The irony lies too deep for tears.
Baby Steps, Giant Swallows
The destruction from within of their much vaunted and hotly contested liberty was of grave concern to America’s Founding Fathers. Tere was much worry about the control of possible violence and probable factionalism—the new Constitution was still controversial. James Madison first advocated in the Federalıst Papers growth beyond the original thirteen colonies in 1788. For Madison, safety resided in numbers and dispersion. “Extend the sphere,” he said writing as Publius in Federalist #10. [3] This would soon mean products as well as land and would provide the economic impetus for what would become the self-assigned destiny of America. The quip about “extending the sphere” would be slightly restated fifty years later by Andrew Jackson, the George W. Bush of his day, as“extending the area of freedom.” “Extend” would become a codeword for dispossessing, cheating, and disposing of southern American Indians along with forcibly annexing Texas from Mexico. [4]
Expansion for expansion’s sake was not some abstract ideal. Many thought—and not just abolitionists—that the insatiable demand for cotton by England, and the arable land for the southern slavers to grow it, were the true fuels for expansion. Historian William Appleman Williams describes this condition as “the American farm businessmen who were in a quasi-colonial position inside their own national economy” while operating as“economic imperialists” abroad.[5]
By expanding the territory the potential for passionate insurrection, while not eliminated, would at least be controlled by the wider representation in government and the resulting variety and multiplicity of issues. These “issues” had already coalesced into the agrarian versus the cosmopolitan argument, that is, agricultural interests posed against the monetary banking power of the cities. Let those passions be nurtured to the broader common good, Madison said, and over a wider range, both intellectually and geographically. And of course, this would be all in the best interests of the electorate.
As Madison wrote: Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. [6]
Thus the risk of violent factionalism would be avoided. Let the passions prevail, allow the people a voice, although a marginal one. Control was the key. Divide and diffuse. By extending the sphere of political representation, the heat of disagreement is dissipated and factionalized, like coalition governments in parliamentary democracies.
Ever analytical in justifying its actions, ever striving to be unique among any and all nations, John Jay similarly extolled some differences between the young America and its former parent, England. That Jay considered post-colonial America to be the nucleus for a much wider domain is obvious. He wrote:
It has often given me pleasure to observe, that independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, wide spreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities. [7]
Jay was border-conscious and, like Jefferson, suspicious of Spain and France. These fears would later be heightened by Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The concerns then shifted from commercial navigation of the Mississippi to protecting its mouth at New Orleans. And this focused American eyes on Cuba. The American fixation on Cuba began even earlier. In 1761, Benjamin Franklin spoke about Cuba and Mexico as being next on the list of acquisitions. But it was Jefferson who was fixated on the Black Pearl of the Antilles. He viewed the island as a mere appendage of Florida and a natural way to expand the new republic. In addition to its geopolitical strategic importance, Cuba was the center of the slave trade; this was of great interest to the slave-holding southern states as a way to expand economic and political power. Cuba entering the union as Texas had would prove a boon for the slave states. Thus began the long-standing national fixation on Cuba spanning almost three centuries as a natural protector of the southern border of the United States and now for decades a threat. Sounding like Bush and Cheney, John Jay made the claim that America’s security concerns alone justified expansion. [8] Jefferson wrote:
Spain thinks it convenient to shut the Mississippi against us on the one side, and Britain excludes us from the St. Lawrence on the other; nor will either of them permit the other waters, which are between them and us, to become the means of mutual intercourse and traffic. From these and such like considerations, which might if consistent with prudence, be more amplified and detailed, it is easy to see that jealousies and uneasiness may gradually slide into the minds and cabinets of other nations; and that we are not to expect they should regard our advancement in union, in power and consequence by land and by sea, with an eye of indifference and composure. [9]
Jefferson was also uneasy about fledgling America falling prey to the talons of foreign powers. In an April 27, 1809 letter to James Madison, then President of the United States, Jefferson expressed his deep concern about the ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte toward the Spanish colonies, particularly Mexico and Cuba. Not only was Jefferson anticipating the imperialistic Spanish-American war almost a century later, he poked his finger into the open wound that describes relations between the United States and Cuba to this day. As he noted below:
He [Napoleon] ought the more to conciliate our good will, as we can be such an obstacle to the new career opening on him in the Spanish colonies. That he would give us the Floridas to withhold intercourse with the residue of those colonies, cannot be doubted. But that is no price; because they are ours in the first moment of the first war; and until a war they are of no particular necessity to us. But, although with difficulty, he will consent to our receiving Cuba into our Union, to prevent our aid to Mexico and the other provinces. That would be a price, and I would immediately erect a column on the southernmost limit of Cuba, and inscribe on it a ne plus ultra as to us in that direction. We should then have only to include the north in our Confederacy, which would be of course in the first war, and we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation; and I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self-government.[10]
For Jefferson the primary author of the Constitution, it was quite natural that he was pleased with his efforts. Unfortunately, his“empire for liberty” was a highly selective one, excluding any and all who stood in its relentless path.
Natural God-Given Borders
The notion of a natural right to liberty soon metastasized into other rights that became self-serving vehicles to promote the national interest at the expense of other nations and other peoples. Not surprisingly there was an inherent expansionist impulse in protecting the natural and self-proclaimed God-given right of liberty. By logical extension, claims of a natural right to security, led forthwith to claims for more land, which evolved into something referred to as the Great Law of Preservation, actually an offshoot of the Hobbesian concept of self-preservation. Hobbes claimed that self-preservation, being a natural instinct, should be the root of any political philosophy or system.[11] Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin earlier broached this idea in 1772 in a town meeting in Boston. “The first fundamental, positive law of all common wealths or states,” said Franklin, “is establishing the legislative power. As the first fundamental natural law, also, which is to govern even the legislative power itself, is the preservation of the society.” [12]
The evolved law of self-preservation was evoked by the perceived threat posed by peaceful Canada as a possible staging area and invasion route for the British. The Continental Congress, headed by John Jay, sent a letter to the “oppressed inhabitants of Canada” defending American use of armed ships on Lake Erie and the seizure of forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point in the war of independence from Great Britain. The letter addressed the notion of self-preservation, and soon developed into the “great law of self-preservation.” Jay went on to say “we, for our parts, are determined to live free, or not at all; and are resolved, that posterity shall never reproach us with having brought slaves into the world.” [13] Ever self-referential, apparently the notion that Jay and his forbearers, at the behest of Great Britain, had already brought hundreds of thousands of slaves into the world soon-to-be-called the United States of America did not pose the slightest disturbance.
The best defense? Expansion. For the fledgling coastline nation, with enormous Canada to its north and the Spanish to the south, had little recourse but to seek territorial buffers for its security. But what are the conditions of security? When does a nation’s right to securely exist translate into the right to seize or attack a neighbor? These post-revolutionary issues remain relevant in today’s America as well, particularly the determinants of what constitutes a security threat.
Tensions had been heightened by the presence of the Spanish in Florida and the resulting restriction of navigation rights on the Mississippi River. America claimed the right of free navigation under a Jeffersonian-espoused extension of natural law. As Weinberg notes, “the idea of natural right is apparently like a pebble which, however diminutive, on being cast into the water sets up ripples in remarkably increasing scope” [14] At that time, these “ripples” would lead to tidal waves of hallucinatory logic that eventually floated the nation’s natural right of ‘extension’ to include the full sweep of the Gulf Stream. And related ideas of ‘propinquity’ and‘contiguity’ made the Philippines contiguous to Hawaii and China both. When challenged, US Senator Albert Beveridge, the neo-con of his day, huffed, “Our navy will make them contiguous.” [15]
But Jefferson’s attention centered on the Mississippi River, particularly its mouth. As mentioned earlier, annexation of Cuba became a strategic interest to use as a bulwark for the entrance of this vital commercial artery. Jefferson led the acquisition campaign. In a letter to James Monroe, October 24, 1823 he avowed his desire for Cuba as a strategic interest of the United States, an obsession that persists to this day.
I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being. [16]
When Spain ceded Louisiana to Napoleonic France tensions in America heightened further. But one morning thereafter Napoleon announced from his bath that he would sell the Louisiana Territory to America. In one sense this solved the security problem of New Orleans. But another was created, and it set a dangerous precedent, later visited tragically on the American Indians. It seems that the residents of New Orleans, preferring the more casual Spanish rule, did not like the quick flip sale by France to America. Ever concerned about internal rebellion, America acted reflexively. Thus on the day of possession President Jefferson sent in the troops. One may note that thus began the long and continuing use of America’s military to solve political problems, usually in the name of protecting its God-given democracy.
Thus Jefferson, that champion of democracy, suspended the natural, democratic right of the people of New Orleans—and greater Louisiana—to have political freedom. More specifically, he nullified their natural right to have government, in Jefferson’s language, “at the consent of the governed.”Offered neither statehood nor territorial government, they had no representation, the crucial flashpoint of the American war of revolution thirty years earlier. That these people—Indian and non-Indian both— had no natural rights whatsoever little affected Jefferson. According to Weinberg,
It is the doctrine that by the destiny manifest in geography America’s natural right to territory essential to its security must override the right of self-determination claimed by its inhabitants. Here for the first time the idea that “our rights” must not be destroyed leads to the destruction of that cornerstone of the nationalist’s natural right philosophy, the universal right to political liberty.[17]
Thinking indeed relevant today.
American imperialism of that time was focused on its own concerns about security, regardless of concerns for people like the non-citizens of Louisiana. Thus grew the flawed and heavily biased ideology that America’s—and Americans—rights always trump others. The champions of human rights became the chumps of heavy-handed enforcement. Had America revealed itself as naive? Or at best hypocritical? Or at its worst, an aggressive, dangerous imperialist power? Where in the spectrum would it reside?
Learning from its success, America convinced itself of the purity and clarity of its destiny. Experts like Weinberg speak of the pride inherent in the American achievement in democracy, with certain notable exceptions covered over by the enthusiasm of the endeavor. The deity was invoked in whose name geography and civilizations were overrun and destroyed. Shifting and ever escalating principles were developed to justify aggressive and morally questionable land grabs and the related mistreatment of aboriginal inhabitants. As for the newly obtained population of New Orleans, no consent was obtained from the governed, no offer of representation or citizenship was extended. The endeavor to expand was all, a mission designed to light the way for democracy, liberty, security, and equality not only for America, but for the world. Weinberg comments:
The logical composition of ideas may contain elements which, as the ideas enter into chemical reaction with more emotional factors, cause them to undergo precisely the transformations which their original propounders would most abhor. [18]
Retrospectively over the long sweep of history what would these original “propounders” now say? What would such a backward glimpse reveal about the America that was their dream, the endeavor to which they pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor? Would they smile beneficently? Or would their words be the dying words of the despairing Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guiness) in the film, The Bridge On the River Kwai, “What have I done?”
The Divinity of Nature
The doubling in size of America from the Louisiana Purchase did not satiate the need for more land. More land only meant more border problems. So concern continued to grow about protecting the mouth of the Mississippi River, that is, New Orleans and the delta plain. And now the strategic focus shifted to the Spanish colony, Florida. What to do? The assertion of a natural“righteousness” seemed outdated given that Florida was a dangling remnant of the original Spanish holding of what eventually became the Louisiana Purchase. Setting aside the natural right principle, nature itself was selected as the rational for extension. “Instead of reading the law of nature primarily from the heart of man,” noted Weinberg, “expansionists took to reading it from the configuration of the earth.” [19] After all, since nature had ordered all things including natural boundaries for nations, so certainly had the deity done likewise for the United States. And why not? Hadn’t God himself chosen this nation, above all others, for greatness? Ironically, given its relatively small size, the notion of natural boundaries was used in Europe as a check against expansion. Not so for bountiful America with unimaginably vast territory, recently doubled in size by Jefferson’s acquisition. America was young and fast-moving, unique among countries. What had served for parent Europe no longer served for the child. With the acquisition of the western territory, the previous notion of the Mississippi River as a quasi boundary was shattered forever. The expression “beyond the Mississippi” would later appear as a kind of Biblical “far country”—the “Great American Desert”—to which the southern Indian tribes, primarily forest people, would be banished.[20] And the original idea that the eastern slope of the Appalachian Mountains served as a border was now an historical figment of no consequence. Besides, a river can be crossed, and mountains, while arduous to scale, would never pose a barrier to the plucky, emboldened Americans. But there were big problems down south.
A look at a map reveals the concern raised by Spanish possessions, specifically Florida and Cuba. Annexing these two would impose a strategic natural barrier between the open ocean and the Gulf of Mexico thus securing the commercial and strategic significance of the Mississippi River and New Orleans. To solve the Florida problem explosive suggestions were made. America’s natural boundaries were really the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi river. In other words, all water boundaries east, south, and west. Also advanced was something called the “appendage theory.”This held that Florida had been affixed to the American mainland by the hand of God. The idea of God as master landscape-designer would evolve to be known as the principle of “territorial propinquity.” It held that two adjacent territories connected by a common geographical feature are considered as one combined landmass, as ligaments and muscles connect the foot to the leg to form the completed member. Geography determined everything. Only appropriate ownership was lacking. But the deity of geographical predestination would do the rest. “Unity was posited on the grounds of propinquity, enclosure by the same natural barrier, or a common territorial feature such as a river,”observed Weinberg. [21] With unchecked illogic, these principles would soon evolve into a fantasy of geographical and nautical rationalizing that would take care of Cuba and, by possibly combining sunsets and oceanic currents that burnish and bathe America, the rest of the world. God, at least the American variety, was indeed good and generous.
Expansionist Metaphysics
The babbling was epic. Everything was up for America’s taking according to the expansionists of the early 19th century. Natural boundaries are those that create economic self-sufficiency. Thus, the grain-growing upper Mississippi region is a natural partner with the land around the lower Gulf, that is, Texas. Why? Because one can’t readily transport the grain without using the river system and much of it flows through or abuts Texas. Simple enough. Thus, Texas should be considered part of the Louisiana Purchase. After all, the French discovered the Mississippi River and cruised the Texas coastline as well. Discovery and possession of the coastline presumes that such occupation includes the interior country for it is natural that one has to move inland beyond the beachhead. This is similar to the same earlier fantastic thinking inherent in the Doctrine of Discovery. This established England’s—and later America’s—claim of the northeastern coast of America because John Cabot observed the land from offshore with a deep, penetrating gaze as might some colonial Superman. In fact, this very thing, a sort of ‘gaze doctrine’ is at the heart of the logic of the Doctrine of Discovery. Incredibly, this doctrine has been codified into law via US Supreme Court decisions regarding claims of American Indians. The result? The American Indians have remained in a parent-to-child protective relationship, with the court as guardian of their rights. Poor law. Poorer Indians.
The natural boundary theory maintained that the nation holding the greatest part of a river has the right to hold the coastline at its mouth. This applied particularly to the dispute over the right to claim Florida. However, if one was arguing the case for Texas, a neat switch was in order. Here, the nation that holds the seacoast has the right to the inland area that borders the river. In other words, depending upon the natural boundary needs of America, either the vice or the versa can be applied pari passu, that is, equally.
Another watery theory dealt with the northern border and the Mississippi and St. Lawrence rivers. Since the waters merge and mingle at some points, such blending was deemed to constitute a “territorial nexus.” Thus the waterways should belong to the same country, in this case, America. But surprise, surprise! Someone suggested that in upholding that theory, the United States could just as logically belong to Canada. The mingling-of-waters theory was thereafter sent out to sea.
None of the contradictory, self-serving theorizing affected Representative John A. Harper one bit. He had a clear view of the American future. Addressing Congress in 1812, invoking God as the usual trump card, he extolled:
To me, sir, it appears that the Author of Nature has marked our limits in the south, by the Gulf of Mexico; and on the north, by the regions of eternal frost. [22]
These regions of eternal frost are now, nearly two hundred years later, considerably less frosty due to global warming. Yet they remain disputatious. On August 2, 2007, two Russian submersible vessels embedded a Russian flag two miles beneath the polar ice cap at the North Pole. The titanium flag was planted on the Lomonosov Ridge which is an extension of Russia’s continental shelf. The New York Times reported:
At least one country with a stake in the issue registered its immediate disapproval of the expedition. “This isn’t the 15th century,” Peter MacKay, Canada’s foreign minister, said on CTV television. “You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say, ‘We’re claiming this territory’.”[23]
Well who, aside from Mr. MacKay, says so? Apparently one can, and already has, and no doubt will continue to do so, particularly when oil and gas reserves portend below, particularly in this age of post-flag colonialism. Now countries just send in their companies, or in the case of America, its bombs and its mercenaries or its puppet-nation’s resources and military assets. The current use of NATO, particularly Turkey, in North Africa and the Middle East is a prime example.
One of the strangest applications allowed that the Gulf Stream should be considered an extension of the Mississippi River, thus carrying expansionists (and their arguments) well out to sea. None other than Thomas Jefferson found the notion plausible. He wrote to James Monroe in 1806:
We begin to broach the idea that we consider the whole Gulph Stream as of our waters, in which hostilities and cruising are to be frowned on for the present, and prohibited so soon as either consent or force will permit us. [24]
What? Thus Ireland, washed by the Gulf Stream, could be considered part of America.
In 1804, another expansionist, William Chandler, celebrated the Fourth of July with the bombastic warning that the Louisiana Purchase was only the beginning.“Our boundaries shall be those which Nature has formed for a great, powerful, and free State.” [25] Chandler went on to assert that the natural southern expanse for the United States was the Isthmus of Panama, perhaps on the withering principle of the withering waistline between two oceans. But dig a canal, mingle the waters, and the world could become one big Yankee doodle toy.
James (Cem)Ryan, Ph.D. 14 July 2012
National Atlas of the United States, U.S. Government, 2006 PUBLIC DOMAIN
[1] Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansionism in American History, p. 17.
[2] Declaration of Independence, “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” [3]Federalist Papers, p. 78
[4] Today similar Orwellian words can be heard dropping daily from the lips of the American politicians as they bring democracy, peace, and freedom to the Iraqi people, and indeed all over the Middle East. Let’s brush up our Shakespeare and remember what he said: “And let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood/Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords;/Then walk forth, even to the market-place,/And waving our red weapons o’er our heads,/Let’s all cry, “Peace, Freedom, and Liberty!” (Julius Caesar, III, I, 106-110).
[5] William A. Williams, The Roots of Modern American Empire, p. 22.
[6]Federalist Papers, p. 78.
[7] Ibid., p.32. [8] Richard W. Van Alstyne, The Rising American Empire, pp. 88,89,148-151.
[9]Federalist Papers., p. 41.
[10] Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 12, p. 277.
[11] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter XIV, 1. “THE RIGHT of Nature, which writers commonly call jus naturale, is the liberty each man hath to use his own power as he will himself for the preservation of his own nature, that is to say, of his own life; and consequently of doing anything which in his own judgment and reason he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.”
[12] Samuel Adams. Benjamin Franklin. The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting, Nov. 20, 1772,
[13] John Jay, Journals of the Continental Congress, “Letter to the Inhabitants of Canada,” May 29, 1775, Avalon Project, Yale University.
[14] Weinberg, op. cit., p. 27.
[15] Ibid., p. 68.
[16] Thomas Jefferson, Letter to President of the United States, James Monroe, October 24, 1823,
[17] Weinberg, op. cit, p. 34.
[18] Ibid., p. 39.
[19] Ibid., p. 43. [
20] Richard Van Alstyne, op. cit., p. 94. Van Alstyne writes about the terra incognita in the American west: “Expeditions which ventured, during the first three decades of the nineteenth century, across the treeless plains to the Rockies and beyond into the alkali basin of the Great salt Lake reported on these barriers; and until the mid-century the maps of the United States labeled the region as ‘the Great American Desert’.”
[21]Weinberg, op. cit., p. 50.
[22] Ibid., p. 53.
[23] C.J. Chivers, “Russians Plant Flag on the Arctic Seabed.” The New York Times. August 3, 2007.
[24] Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 11, p. 111.
[25] Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in America, p. 13. ____________________________________________________________
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, Samuel. Franklin, Benjamin. The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting. Nov. 20, 1772,
Chivers, C.J. “Russians Plant Flag on the Arctic Seabed.” The New York Times. August 3, 2007.
Declaration of Independence, United States.
Federalist Papers, The. Signet Classics, New York, 2003. Hobbs, Thomas. Leviathan. Oxford University Press, New York, 2008.
Jay, John. Journals of the Continental Congress, Letter to the Inhabitants of Canada; May 29, 1775. The Avalon Project, Yale University.
Jefferson, Thomas. Letter to President of the United States, James Monroe, October 24, 1823.
Jefferson, Thomas. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. 20 volumes, Lipscomb, Andrew A. Albert Ellery Bergh, and Richard Holland Johnson, eds. Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States, Washington, DC, 1903.
Merk, Frederick. Manifest Destiny and Mission in America. Alfred Knopf, New York, 1963.
Van Alstyne, Richard W. The Rising American Empire. W.W. Norton, New York, 1975.
Weinberg, Albert K. Manifest Destiny. The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1935.
Williams, William Appleman. The Roots of Modern American Empire. Vintage Books, New York, 1970. ______________________________________________________________________________________
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE REAL HISTORY OF AMERICA, CLICK ON AND READ SHOUTS
Stoop, Romans, Stoop,
And let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood
Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords; Then walk we forth, even to the market-place,
And waving our red weapons o’er our heads, Let’s all cry, “Peace, freedom, and liberty !” Julius Caesar, Act III, i
According to experts if you really, really want to get rid of a neighbor—“bump off” is the professional term—call the mafia. But if you’re a down-at-the-heels fast fading super power, broke and bewildered, and need to continue the Arab Spring fairy tale about having the Arabs choose America-friendly democracies that sprout like orange groves throughout the Middle East, these same experts unanimously suggest you call Turkey. Just dial 011-90-ALLAHSBOYS. Oerators are standing by to answer your calls.
ALLAH’S BOYS specialize in duplicity: double-talking, double-dealing, and double-facing. Once upon a time not so very long ago “peace at home, peace in the world” was a national motto in Turkey. Now, thanks to ALLAH’S BOYS, there is no peace anywhere. And even more recently, ALLAH’S BOYS declared a foreign policy aphorism: “zero problems with our neighbors.” Now Turkey has nothing but problems and zero genuine neighbors, despite the weak-knee scribbling of the government-controlled propaganda press.
So since America needs to oust the leadership of Syria, Turkey is their international gangster of choice. Need to secure the oil pipeline forever? Want to protect Israel’s borders, even though expansionist Israel has never declared them? Call Turkey. This amnesiac country can forget the “van minit” fiasco at Davos in approximately one minute, if the price is right. It’s so terribly easy. All it takes is money.
Yes, ALLAH’S BOYS will do the sneaky, dirty work, especially on their brother Muslims, very democratic, these boys. After all, ALLAH’S BOYS are CIA creatures. Remember the “our boys did it!” exclamation from the 1980 CIA-induced Turkish military coup? ALLAH’S BOYS are the bad seed Islamo-fascist children of that catastrophe. True masters of disaster who have raped their own country through privatization, just like the juntas did in South America. Inside Turkey environmental disaster prevails. Forests are destroyed, rivers contaminated by stupid self-serving plans. “No river shall run in vain,” says the head ALLAH’S BOY, meaning that all running waterways will somehow, somewhere generate electricity. Forget nature. Turkey’s once thriving agriculture is nearly barren, its seed imported from Israel. The uneducated voting base of ALLAH’S BOYS remains bedazzled and uneducated. With no economic plan for the future, ALLAH’S BOYS encourages them to have at least 3-5 children. It needs the votes. The once proud Turkish Army has been purged, its senior ranks now stuffed with government toadies. The recent military disasters related to America’s drone-fiascos attest to its incompetence; it has yet to explain or otherwise account for the grievous loss of Turkish lives. Hundreds, thousands—one loses count—of democratic dissenters are in jails throughout the land. Everyone is wire-tapped. Public-space cameras abound. Fascist style police control the streets. Every public assembly of citizens turns into a police riot. Democratic constitutional protections no longer exist. The judicial system is thoroughly politicized. Art, music, cinema, theater, writing, all is subject to censure or fine or destruction. And political thievery an institutional art form.
All this and more is what America’s favorite adopted sons, ALLAH’S BOYS, have brought to their own country. ALLAH’S BOYS knows how to do two things very well, destroy and make money. And America truly loves what this motley crew has done for now the US is paying them big war-bucks for a new, disastrous adventure in the name so-called democracy. Now the Arab world is experiencing democracy a la Turka, as prepared in America, as delivered by ALLAH’S BOYS and their CIA handlers.
It all happened so quickly, like love at first sight. Only two years ago the capo of ALLAH’S BOYS wondered out loud about “what business does NATO have in Libya?” This was shortly after he had accepted the Muammar Gaddafi Human Rights Award. But then a breeze blew past his bristled upper lip bringing the smell of cordite, carrion, and chaos, followed by a little bird carrying a wad of large denomination American dollars. Twitter. Twitter. And ALLAH’S BOYS suddenly learned how to make money from war. And suddenly Muammar became a big-time loser and the Turks were bombing Libya along with the rest of NATO. And for the last 15 months ALLAH’S BOYS have been provoking Syria. In collusion with the CIA, automatic weapons, tanks, rockets, all the toys of war, have been given to the so-called Friends of Syria mercenaries. These unsavory characters bear a painful resemblance to the US-financed gangsters who toppled Saddam’s statue in Firdos Square in 2003 and, to Hillary Clinton’s great glee, sodomized and disemboweled Gaddafi last year. And now the murderers from the infamous Blackwater gang are in southern Turkey. Such is the way ALLAH’S BOYS (and the CIA) operate. Money. Money. Money.
But now they have provoked Syria too much. A Turkish jet, violating Syrian air space, coming in low and fast, got dropped into the sea. Remember the Gulf of Tonkin fiasco? The concocted incident that “validated” America’s disastrous war in Viet Nam? This is the same lying subterfuge played on the world stage, courtesy of the CIA and America’s puppet show provided by ALLAH’S BOYS. And now ALLAH’S BOYS cry murder most foul their own self-provoked crisis. And of course their American handlers echo the outrage. Make no mistake about this: they, ALLAH’S BOYS and America, are the real murderers of the two downed Turkish pilots. Along with the incompetent military commanders who approved this mission of provocation. But indeed they all found out that, Yes, Syria does indeed have an air defense capability. How stupidly negligent can one be? Ah, but the money is good.
As they used to say about Mexico and America, can be said about Syria: “Poor Syria. So far from God. So close to Turkey.” And to think Bashar Assad, a physician trained in England and president of Syria, and his stylish wife, Esma, British and college-educated, were feted in Ankara not too long ago. His wife dazzled in comparison to the fashion-retard covered wives of ALLAH’S BOYS. Then, Turkey and Syria were on great terms. The border was open. No visas or passports necessary. Trade was booming between Hatay in southern Turkey and Syria. But then that same little bird flew in the window at Ankara. And suddenly the room was full of money. And suddenly it became War! War! War! And American war bucks galore filled the Turkish air. And the ever capacious, ever open pockets of the Turkish government became happy pockets indeed.
The Turkish media lackeys bang their pathetic war drums. ALLAH’S BOYS cry wah-wah-wah to NATO, the UN and any other agency who cares to listen. It’s known as the alibi-cover up scam, also known as “protesting too much.” But the BOYS have America’s melodramatic outrage to revel in, and “endless support” according to the hapless American ambassador. So now Turkey can add its bloody hand to the millions of its Muslim “brothers and sisters” killed and displaced in Iraq and Afghanistan. What a bloody bunch! What a collection of phonies! What a dishonorable gang!
There is no honor in war. Just examine the photographs of the destroyed Iraqi children. Where are your children, ALLAH’S BOYS? There surely is no honor in America’s endless, hopeless, murderous wars. And there is nothing but treachery and greed among America’s War-Horse whores, these dogs of war who wave their red weapons over their heads crying “PEACE! FREEDOM! LIBERTY!” when they really mean MONEY! MONEY! MONEY! Killers all.
And all this carnage under the aegis of the Nobel Peace Prize winning American president.
The shame is boundless, the rape obscene.
Cem Ryan
13 July 2012
PS: See the websites of West Point Graduates Against The War and Service Academy GraduatesAgainst The War for further details about America’s war crimes and its war criminals.
ISTANBUL European Union diplomats are expressing growing concern at what they see as the increasingly militant stance taken by Turkey’s ruling Islamists.
They accuse Ankara of using probes into alleged plots against the government as a tool to jail and silence opponents and compromise the country’s secular credentials by introducing Holy Quran studies in public schools.
Other measures include lowering the age at which parents can send their children to Islamic religious schools, increasing pressure on those criticising Islam and restricting abortion.
Turkish authorities accuse the so-called Ergenekon network of being behind several plots to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Dozens of retired or serving senior military figures, intellectuals, lawyers and journalists put behind bars.
On Thursday Stefan Fuele, European commissioner for enlargement, cited this and other obstacles in the way of Turkey’s membership bid while in Istanbul for talks.
“I have used this meeting to convey our concerns about the increasing detention of lawmakers, academics and students and the freedom of press and journalists,” he said.
Changes due to take effect when the new academic year starts this autumn will also have ruffled feathers. The Islamist-rooted ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government is introducing Holy Quran lessons.
And from the end of primary school, more parents will be able to opt out of the secular education system and send their children to Islamic religious schools. Previously these schools could not recruit children under the age of 15: now children as young as 11 will be allowed to attend.
There is concern too over plans by state broadcaster TRT to launch a religious channel and proposals for prayer rooms in newly built public buildings such as creches, theatres and even opera houses.
“A series of recent moves show that the conservative tendency has the upper hand and faces no opposition,” said Marc Pierini, a former head of the EU diplomatic team in Turkey.
“Civil society exists, but it is hardly audible,” said one Ankara-based diplomat.
“The media are for the most part directly or indirectly controlled by the AKP and the opposition is powerless,” the diplomat added.
Plans to restrict the abortion laws and other moves that critics say will would make Islam a more visible part of daily life are added areas of concern.
Comments last month by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which he compared abortion to a botched attack by the military that killed 34 civilians last December, brought a sharp response from a senior EU diplomat.
Erdogan had said of abortion: “You either kill a baby in the mother’s womb or you kill it after birth. There’s no difference.”
And in a emotive reference to the attack in Uludere, in which Turkish warplanes killed civilians they had mistaken for Kurdish separatists, he said “every abortion is an Uludere.”
“Some politicians made comparisons that are not appropriate,” Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, head of the EU delegation in Turkey, told journalists.
The remainder of my trip to Turkey sparked some further thoughts, including some qualifications to my last post. To wit:
1. I previously described the conference I attended — the Istanbul World Political Forum — as an illustration of Turkey’s emphasis on “soft power.” By creating a Davos-like annual meeting oriented towards issues central to emerging economies, the organizers sought to display Turkey’s growing importance as a political player. I still think that’s right, but my conversations with other attendees suggest that the IWPF will need to raise its game in the years ahead if they want to reap the full benefits. The panels were interesting and well-attended, and there were a number of informative speakers, but I also heard a lot of complaints about the overall level of organization of the operation. Some speakers didn’t know which panels they would appear on until the last minute, and the format of some sessions wasn’t clear until you showed up. I also heard complaints about haphazard travel arrangements, although in my own case the bookings worked well after some initial glitches. Putting on an event like this isn’t easy, but if the Turkish government and the other sponsors hope to use these forums as a way of demonstrating their efficiency, competence, and managerial ability, they’ve got a ways to go.
2. One of the more vivid impressions I took from the conference was the prevailing wariness — if not outright suspicion — with which the United States was viewed by many of the attendees. Virtually any statement that cast even mild doubt about U.S. policy (on Iran, Middle East peace, past interventions, Iraq, etc.) drew spontaneous approval from the audience, even if the statements weren’t especially provocative, penetrating, or anti-American. For example, in the panel on a possible war with Iran, I suggested that if the U.S. wanted to dissuade Iran from building nuclear weapons, it might make sense to stop threatening Tehran with regime change. The audience immediately burst into loud applause. Similar statements by journalist and professor Stephen Kinzer and Juergen Chrobog of the BMW Stiftung Herbert Quandt elicited much the same response. And most of the questions (or diatribes) from the audience were either explicitly or implicitly critical of the U.S. position. I had a similar experience in my other panel as well.
I wish some U.S. government officials had been there to observe this phenomenon, because it drove home to me the degree to which U.S. policy is regarded by many is inherently myopic, selfish, and illegitimate. (And the positive bump produced by Obama’s election in 2008 is long gone). It’s not a deep hatred of Americans themselves, but rather a simmering resentment of America’s global role. And I think many Americans just don’t get this, especially when they spend all their time talking to their counterparts (i.e., the global 1 percent) in other countries.
3. The trip also highlighted for me the ambiguities of Turkey’s internal politics under the AKP. I’ve been trying to figure out where Turkey is headed for a number of years now, and I still don’t consider myself anything like an expert on political developments there. But several incidents on this trip underscored the deep tensions that still persist and may be getting worse.
On the one hand, the AKP has done an impressive job of stimulating economic growth, reforming ordinary criminal justice practice, encouraging some forms of democratic participation, and emphasizing higher education. I would also give them high marks for their overall handling of foreign policy. The much-ballyhooed “zero problems” strategy trumpeted by Prime Minister Erdogan and Foreign Minister Davatoglu has hit some rough spots in the past couple of years (most visibly over Syria), but it’s still a smart aspiration, even if it has proven more difficult to implement in practice. And I still think the U.S. has an important interest in maintaining good relations with Turkey going forward; to see this, just imagine how much more difficult our dealings with this region would be if Ankara and Washington were really at odds.
But on the other hand, AKP rule has been heavy-handed in a variety of disturbing ways, most notably in the protracted detention of the so-called Ergenekon suspects and in its various efforts to manipulate or intimidate the Turkish press. The AKP hasn’t been anywhere near as brutal as some previous military governments (among other things, Turkey’s overall human rights record is vastly better than in some earlier eras, but there are still a lot of disturbing elements. While I was at the conference, three different people came up to tell me privately that “things were really bad here,” and that the United States had to do more to pressure the AKP. It was clear after a few minutes of conversation that these speakers were secularists from the old order (i.e., they are part of a class that has been losing power), but it was nonetheless striking to hear their concerns. At a minimum, it suggested to me that that AKP has done a much better job of clipping the wings of the old guard than it has of reconciling them to the realities of the new Turkey.
Given Turkey’s turbulent past, this lingering animosity is not that surprising. But it does not bode well for the future, especially if the economic prosperity on which the AKP’s popularity rests begins to flag. And as I said on one panel, the continued deterioration of domestic freedoms in Turkey is bound to be exploited by groups who are worried about Turkey’s foreign policy direction, thereby damaging U.S.-Turkish relations in ways that both countries would soon regret.
4. Adding it all up, I’d argue that we are witnessing an important shift in world politics whose broader implications are worrisome for the United States. Political participation is broadening and deepening in more and more countries, and even if the results fall far short of some ideal vision of democracy (let alone the imperfect U.S. version of that ideal), these states are going to be increasingly sensitive to popular sentiment. Unfortunately, U.S. policy towards many parts of the world has depended more on cushy deals with oligarchs, dictators, and plutocrats, and past U.S. actions (most of them undertaken for various Cold War/anti-communist reasons) have left a toxic legacy that most Americans do not fully appreciate. Add to that our frequent resort to military force since the Cold War ended, our enthusiastic use of sanctions despite the human costs to ordinary citizens, and our insistence that there are really two sets of rules in world politics (the U.S. can violate other states’ sovereignty whenever we want, but weaker states who object to this get demonized and/or threatened with more of the same). The result is a world where many people would like to take us down several pegs, and where it can be costly for political leaders to be openly supportive of U.S. initiatives (see under: Pakistan).
America is still very powerful, and plenty of governments still understand that some of our strategic interests overlap. But we’re entering a world were fewer and fewer governments are going to be reflexively deferential to the United States, for the simple reason that they pay attention to popular sentiment and their own national interests aren’t in fact identical to ours. If we expect governments in these countries to be as supine as some of their predecessors, we had better get used to disappointment. What will be needed is a lot more nuance, flexibility, and diplomatic skill, as well as a greater sense of humility and restraint. I only hope that we are better at displaying these qualities in the future than we’ve been in the recent past.
