Austin Hair wrote:
For the US, the
analog to Tibet would be the overthrow of the monarchy
and annexation of Hawaii, or the slaughtering of Native Americans and
forcing them to live on undesirable land.
Both circumstances which took place over a century ago and are now
universally deplored among our citizens and leaders alike. Modern times
demand modern ideals, not arrogant attempts at dynasty.
That would be nice. Instead of hereditary kings we have the corprate
ideals of Brown & Root in Vietnam and of Haliburton in Iraq.
When trying to
make this more prominent in the [[Hawaii]] article,
folks, including myself, were met immediately with abusive responses
from fellow users - "ignorant," "intellectually dishonest,"
"childish," "blow your own horn."
As I recall, the overthrow of the monarchy was not state-sponsored, but
rather a sort of personal coup undertaken unilaterally by our diplomats
and condemned at the time by President Cleveland. I also seem to recall
that the monarchy was restored, with annexation occuring after only
after it collapsed on itself years later and everyone expected the
United States to pick up the pieces (it was, after all, "our mess").
Perhaps the Philippines would be a better analogy.
Plausible deniability. Who was around during the Clinton administration
that was directly affected by the sins of the Cleveland administration?
It's easy to apologize when it's too late for any other meaningful act.
The Catholic Church recently even apologized to Gallileo. Without even
getting into whether the Bay of Pigs invasion was a good idea the fact
is that the Kennedy administration was quick to distance itself from
that operation when it saw that it was turning into a complete failure.
What kind of an ally is that?
By allowing free enterprise to start the problems the US govenment can
then reject its surrogates when things are going too badly, or send in
the marching bands when there's glory to be had.
Murdering Indians is bad. You'll hear no excuses
from me on the matter.
That said, neither I nor any of my ancestors have ever knowingly killed
an aboriginal native of the American continent, so don't kick my ass
about it.
This is a question of collective guilt, not individual guilt. Of course
those whose families did not immigrate into the US until after that time
had no connection with the event.
Ec