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In recent weeks, our president has responded in a perfectly normal way to bad news. George W. Bush blames the messenger. The media, he says, are focusing on all the bombings and attacks in Iraq, as well as the non-discovery of any weapons of mass destruction, rather than on the positive news of rebuilt schools, improved oil production, restored electricity and the like.
While it's entirely possible that good things have been happening in Iraq and that these events have been ignored by the media (for instance, most people seem to want to know more about the trees that are burning, and don't seem to care at all that millions of Colorado trees are still green and thriving), the fact is that the difficulties in Iraq should have come as no surprise.
That's because the United States has a mixed track record as an occupying force which transforms a society. The conquest and occupation of Japan and Germany during and after World War II were success stories. But that's not always the case.
Consider America's first imperial adventure -- the conquest of Mexico in 1846-48, followed by acquisition of California, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas, along with pieces of Colorado and Wyoming.
In this part of the world, the military operation went even more smoothly than the conquest of Baghdad. In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West, under the command of Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny, marched west from Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and captured Santa Fe without firing a single shot.
(The details remain unclear even now, but many historians view this bloodless conquest as a triumph of American diplomacy. They theorize that James Magoffin, an American special envoy who traveled ahead of Kearny's army, made a deal with Manuel Armijo, the governor of New Mexico. The deal was a substantial bribe to Armijo so that he would move his forces south instead of defending the provincial capital.)
Kearny appointed Charles Bent (one of the Bent brothers of Bent's Fort) as territorial governor, and marched on west to California. But all did not remain peaceful in New Mexico. In January of 1847, some residents of Taos and nearby Pueblos rebelled. After they battered down the door to his house, Bent was scalped in front of his family. Villages were attacked and men killed, Raiders struck ranches and wagon trains.
In other words, it was an 1847 version of what's happening in Iraq now -- a swift military conquest followed by attacks on the new authorities. The revolt was put down, and even if New Mexico remains different from the rest of the United States. it's still very much part of our country.
Over time, that was a success despite the difficulties. But another federal occupation, aimed at transforming a conquered society, has yet to succeed. Indeed, the conquerors and conquered seem to have traded places.
That effort at rebuilding a defeated society is known as
Reconstruction. After Confederate forces surrendered to end
our Civil War in 1865, the South was put under military
government, assisted by the scalawags
and the
carpetbaggers.
A few former Confederates, like Generals James Longstreet and Robert E. Lee, adjusted to the new order. But there were many who did not. They organized a terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan, to attack the occupiers and prevent former slaves from exercising their civil rights.
The Yankee occupation did not transform Southern society. Instead, the country wearied of the effort and expense, so that after the close presidential election of 1876, a deal was struck. The Southerners would not get enough votes in the Electoral College to elect their candidate, James Tilden. But the federal occupation of the South would end.
As for many of those Confederate attitudes that were supposed to be transformed by the conquest and occupation, they're still with us. Indeed, they're now dominant in American politics.
Or at least, that's how I read a recent book by Michael
Lind, Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern
Takeover of American Politics.
Lind identifies some old Southern political economic and political traditions: free trade, rather than protecting American industry; crony capitalism, rather than competitive enterprises; government support of certain religions, rather than strict separation of church and state; use of military force, rather than negotiation and diplomacy; promotion of rural values, rather than adaptation to the urban and urbane.
So here we have the Republican Party, founded in 1854 to subdue and perhaps eliminate the Dixie Way of Life, now operating as an agent to promote the old Cotton Belt agenda. Reconstruction has got to rank among the worst failures known to history.
Little wonder, then, that America is running into some
trouble reconstructing
Iraq. It's not one of our
national talents.
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