This is beginning to feel like an interview, with an occasional incredulous interjection. It feels much less like an interrogation that it did earlier though, so that's nice.
mnaz wrote: So if no state is legitimate, then this isn't just a United States problem, right? It is the state in general that should go away.
Right.
Except the entire world is made up of states, so this presents quite a quandary it would seem.
Is it? It seems to me there are quite a lot of stateless nations. With few exceptions, the entire indigenous world (sometimes referred to as the "fourth world" by indigenous people) is stateless. States
claim or occupy nearly every inch of the world, and yes, that presents a challenge, but not an insurmountable challenge, and not a challenge not worth facing.
Or are you saying that the U.S. state is far, far more destructive or repressive or imperialistic than any other, and if only it went away, that might be good enough?
No. I'm not saying that. But the US is a rogue state, as far as that goes, and far outside the acceptable bounds of decency according to quite a lot of the world. But that's even beside the point.
The point is a lot like I said about glass houses earlier. The
problem of the United States is
ours, and the
responsibility is as well. Pointing fingers and saying,
well they have a state, which is repressive and…, is not an excuse to shirk our responsibilities. Let's get the US in line, and let the French get France in line.
Also, this distinction you make between nation and state is interesting. I never thought of it that way.
The really remarkable thing is that they teach these things in basic high school civics class, and it seems to go through everyone without making an impact. (That isn't meant to come off as arrogant or derogatory, I had to revisit this stuff too, and found it unintuitive given the everyday language we seem to use in this culture.)
What about rogue nations? What about coherent social groups that are warlike and aggressive toward others at times?
Can't you surmise from what I've said in the last few posts that I'd say that they should be stopped? But they shouldn't be destroyed.
My guess is, though, that such a "rogue nation", if truly rogue, would already be well on its way to its own demise. These sorts of things don't
just happen, they happen for a reason.
Healthy societies don't accumulate vast land, wealth and resources at the expense of others.
Didn't Indian tribes wage aggressive war against other tribes at times?
Some did, some didn't. You'll also note that I made reference a while back to legitimate warfare. In some cases of indigenous warfare, there can be legitimacy to the conflict.
Also, some of what we refer to as "Indian tribes" (which should rightly be called
nations in most cases…) were imperial, not indigenous. The Aztecs, Incas and Mayans (the "great Indian civilizations") exemplify this. Their warfare did not reflect the warfare of, say, the Apaches.
These kinds of distinctions are really important. There's a very big difference between an empire taking slaves and building massive temples, on the one hand, and a set of cultural groups legitimately settling disputes over resources on which they depend for survival, on the other hand.
But I find a lot of these kinds of questions frustrating. I think it's pretty obvious that this way of life isn't sustainable, moral or desirable. I think it's pretty obvious that the way European colonizers treated the indigenous peoples of this continent is different from how they treated one another (after all, they numbered in the millions until the Europeans came, and their population was reduced rapidly by about 95% thereafter).
And I'm still not sure what exactly you mean by returning claimed territory, and why it is so absolutely essential.
Well, imagine yourself on the other end of the equation and it might be more apparent.
In the evolution and history of human society, one would be hard pressed to find any corner of the earth that hasn't at some point in time been stolen or conquered by someone at the expense of someone else.
But how many of those examples also include empires that have continued this process for centuries, unrestrained and with no sign of self-restraint on the horizon? It's essential to reverse the process as far as possible, because the process is ongoing, and is the predominant example of it at this point in time.
Furthermore, again, I feel the impulse to say that we live in a glass house. It isn't our business what other countries are doing. We are responsible, first, to stop our own crimes. When we're without sin, we can then cast the first stone. Isn't that fair?
What chosen set of centuries-old transgressions do we want to dwell upon or hold ourselves to?
Basically, it's a matter of historical genealogy (a concept, I think, that should be attributed to Foucault): you take a condition that you want to reverse, and you trace it back to the point of departure, the point of change that eventually led to this undesired condition. Basically, from where I stand, here in the US, responsible to stop
my own crimes, I can trace each and every one to the point at which Europe colonized the New World.
There is a direct line of… well, bodies… from then, to Iraq. To Afghanistan. To Suharto, to Pinochet, to Karimov, to Hussein, even, in a sense, to Hitler.
And, I repeat this to be clear, these transgressions
are not centuries old. They're centuries
long. In New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada, Indians are actively faced with forced relocation (which is genocidal in its impact, as their culture is inherently tied with their landbases) to this day. The US enforced genocidal sanctions against Iraq (which caused 1.5 million deaths at last count, in 1999; the sanctions continued for four years after that) until only a few years ago, and continue to blockade North Korea and Cuba (all of these having precisely the opposite effect of the stated goals behind them: serving to further empower the tyrants in each of those places). The US is the principle material supporter of Israeli ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Just for a few examples.
