Media Should Study American Foreign Policy Historically

Articles in this Topic Discussions in this Topic

Dec 31, 2004

Whenever I can I study history. This isn't too difficult to do because, as a homeschooling mother, I teach it to my two kids. Yet how in depth can school textbooks bring forth the totality of history? Thus, I must make my own effort, and, try though I might, the fact emerges that at almost no time in American history after the Revolutionary War when we liberated ourselves from Britian have we persued a non-interventionist foreign policy.

Is it true that we invaded no foreign nations until the Spanish-American War?

FALSE!

In fact, even during--and before-- the Revolution, we were doing just that.

"But only to the Indians," you say.

But weren't those "Indians", I say, foreign nations? Let's see, there was the Iroquoi Confederacy, primarily in what is now "upstate New York" (would you believe, being once a New Yorker, I was forced to study this in seventh grade), who primarily--and yes, they too were imperialists--fought and conquered the Algonquians? Not to mention tried to conquer the Oneontas (would you believe they still have their own Nation? You can see it if you go up a ways on the New York State Thruway, getting off at Oneonta). Even earlier, you had English and Dutch settlers wiping out roughly twenty Long Island independent Nations--only the Shinnecocks are left, somewhere around Haphogue and East Quogue. Then you have the Cherokee and the Trail of Tears--have you visited their Nation in Western North Carolina, and seen their Trail of Tears show, you folks in the media? Well, let me tell you, having seen it when I was about ten turned me into a believer that the USA has done Native Americans a grave injustice.

Then there is the now well-documented fact that shortly after the Revolution we invaded Canada, where many "loyalists" had fled. And who's to say we weren't trying to conquer it as well? The 1790s version of "bring it on," perhaps? (FIND A LINK FOR THIS!)

Don't tell me, all you conservative and liberal and leftist and even you libertarians, who should know better, that US foreign policy only turned imperialist with the Spanish-American War! And if you think it started with the Monroe Doctrine or the War of 1812, THINK AGAIN!

If you folks in the media and you opinion makers would study history for a change, you might actually find that imperialism and wars of conquest are a fact of it!

http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen120120... Wayne Madsen: Wagging the Media

Go To Page: 1 2 3 4

The copyright of the article Media Should Study American Foreign Policy Historically in Media Issues is owned by . Permission to republish Media Should Study American Foreign Policy Historically in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.