I have never been much of a fan for revisiting old crimes as there is no
just solution to putting it back together.
It would be like repealing anti-slavery laws because of the imposition
on State Rights. It is essentially
wrong. What happened then was clearly
wrong. So what - they are all dead. Welcome to history.
The more important question should be whether it is possible to act with
justice. It may be possible to have a
better outcome. Removing Saddam and the
Taliban was just. Following up with a
speedy exit from a natural hornet’s nest is sound strategy. Instead we have a long torturous withdrawal
leaving the inevitable set of thugs in play.
The problem of the day is Syria and the Ukraine. Both look like an invitation to get badly
burned. In Syria, we have the same
problem that the Iran Iraq war presented.
One of them has to win and the longer they go at it the less capable
they are in producing mischief elsewhere.
The Ukraine represents a different problem. NATO needs to move its full battle strength
with some American assistance into the whole Ukraine as a demonstration of
solidarity. At the same time they need
to ensure a proper political structure is created that cannot be gamed in order
to sort out that part of the equation.
Russia has essentially invited this to happen and may draw the wrong
conclusion otherwise. Of course with
that display, it becomes possible to have serious discussions regarding the
future of Crimea and other land issues facing Russia.
My worry is that they will poke until it must happen.
One Nation the U.S. Actually Should Liberate
April 9, 2014
“Secretary Kerry? It’s
Ukraine on the phone asking about liberation again. Have you been able to get
them a reference letter yet from Libya or Iraq or Afghanistan? How about
Vietnam? Panama? Grenada? Kosovo maybe? Ukraine says Syria says you have a
reference letter in the works from Kosovo. No? Huh. They said they’d accept one
from Korea or the Dominican Republic or Iran. No? Guatemala? The Philippines?
Cuba? Congo? How about Haiti? They say you promised them a glowing reference
from Haiti. Oh. They did? No, I am not laughing, Sir. What
about East Timor? Oh? Oh! Sir, you’re going to liberate the what out of them? Yes sir, I think
you’d better tell them yourself.”
Some nations the United
States should probably not liberate — except perhaps the 175 nations which
could be liberated from the presence of U.S. soldiers. But one nation I
would make an exception for, and that is the nation of Hawai’i.
Jon Olsen’s new book, Liberate Hawai’i: Renouncing
and Defying the Continuing Fraudulent U.S. Claim to the sovereignty of Hawai’i, makes a compelling case — a legal case as well as a moral
one.
Olsen’s case, in very
condensed summary, looks like this: Hawai’i was an independent nation,
recognized as such by the United States and numerous other nations, with
treaties in effect between Hawai’i and other nations, including the United
States, that have never been terminated. In 1893 U.S. profiteers and U.S.
Marines, in a criminal act, overthrew Hawai’i's government and queen, setting
up a new government that lacked any legal standing. President Grover
Cleveland investigated what had been done, admitted to the facts, and declared
the new government illegitimate, insisting that the Queen retain the rule she
had never abdicated. But the fraudulent foreign government remained, and
in 1898 once William McKinley was U.S. president, handed over Hawaii (thought
it had no legal power to do so) to the United States, as the United States also
picked up the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Cuba in a bit of a global
shopping spree. By 1959, these events were growing lost in the mists of
time, and the demographics of Hawai’i were radically altered, as Hawai’i was
offered a vote between two bad choices: statehood or continued status as a
colony or “territory” (liberation wasn’t on the ballot). Thus did Hawai’i seem
to become a state without legally becoming any such thing. In 1993, the
U.S. Congress passed and President Clinton signed U.S. Public Law 103-150,
admitted to and apologizing for this history, without of course doing the one
thing legally and morally required — liberating Hawai’i.
The primary purpose of
the U.S. grab for Hawai’i, even more than economic exploitation, was military
expansion, as Olsen shows. The U.S. military wanted, and took, Pearl
Harbor. Then it took a lot more land, occupied it, bombed it, poisoned
it. Now the U.S. military holds 22% of O’ahu, 68% of Kaula, and chunks of
all the major islands, with more planned, archaeological sites threatened,
species threatened, air quality for telescopes threatened, and heightened
tensions around the Pacific not just threatened but those heightened tensions
being the actual purpose of this massive and disastrous investment by the
foreign occupying nation claiming Hawai’i by force and fraud.
What can be done? And of,
by, and for whom exactly? Who is a Hawaiian and who is not? Olsen
does not advocate a Hawaii for the ethnically native Hawaiians alone. He
recognizes that the term “Hawaiian” is used to refer to an ethnic group, and
proposes the invention of the term “Hawaiian national” to refer to anyone who
considers Hawaii home and supports its liberation. I think Olsen is on
the right path but slipping slightly off it. Nationalism has not proved a
wholly beneficial concept. Hawaii needs to be liberated from U.S.
nationalism, but Hawaiians and the rest of us need to begin thinking of
ourselves as citizens of the world, not of one nation over others. Nor do
two wrongs, of whatever disparity, make a right (just ask Palestine). I’d
like to see “Hawaiian” evolve to encompass all who consider Hawaii their home,
without the addition of “national.” Of course this unsolicited advice
from me to Hawaiians may be unappreciated. But then, they are free to
ignore it; I’m not using the Marine Corps as a delivery service, and my advice
to the Marine Corps (unsolicited as well) is to disband and liberate
the world from its existence.
There’s an important
point that I think Olsen’s argument supports, although he does not develop it
in his book, and it is this: If in 1941 Hawaii was not yet even purporting to
be a U.S. state, but was rather an illegally and illegitimately seized
territory, Pearl Harbor having been stolen from the Hawaiian people, then
whatever else you might think of the second major
crime committed at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese did not attack the United
States. The Japanese attacked an imperial outpost in the middle of the
Pacific that they viewed as a threat — and what else was it if not that?
Were Hawaii to liberate
itself from the United States (for the United States is not actually going to
liberate it voluntarily), would the point be moot as the practices of the
United States and China and other nations drive the world’s islands
underwater? Actually, projections show Hawaii
surviving the flood. The question for Hawaiians may be this: Who do you
want managing the influx of millions of Floridians looking for a new paradise
to pave, your own manageable self-governed society or the tender mercies of the
United States Congress?
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