[Nettime-bold] Fwd: America attacked, Wasington razed -- in 1814

[Fatima Lasay <imaginero@yahoo.com>]

 --- Ferdi Bolislis <archipel@bigfoot.com> wrote: >
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 02:10:19 +0800
> From: Ferdi Bolislis <archipel@bigfoot.com>
> Subject: America attacked, Wasington razed -- in
> 1814
> 
> Americans Don’t Understand That Their Heritage Is
> Itself a Threat
> 
> September 23, 2001 
> 
> By CALEB CARR
> 
> 
>  
> 
> We have heard a great deal of talk to the effect
> that the
> world will never be the same after the attacks of
> Sept. 11,
> that we are living in a new reality, and in one
> sense this
> is true. But this is not the first great and violent
> historical turning point that the United States has
> faced.
> In other words, to put it as Lewis Carroll’s Mad
> Hatter
> might have, we have been in this new world before. 
> 
> America experienced just such a prolonged moment
> during our
> own Civil War, when not only armies but also
> civilians were
> slaughtered in horrifying numbers because of a
> long-brewing
> clash between a dying, slavery-based agrarian
> society and a
> vigorous, newly industrial modern state. We
> weathered
> another during the days and years following Pearl
> Harbor,
> when the majority of Americans had no idea if or
> where
> Japanese planes might strike again and were later
> forced
> (as we have lately been) to reckon with enemies who
> were
> willing to engage in suicidal attacks to achieve
> their
> purpose. 
> 
> Yet perhaps the most immediately pertinent of such
> precedents is offered by a much earlier conflict. In
> 1814,
> the United States was engaged in a bitter war, on
> land and
> at sea, with the greatest power in the world, the
> empire
> from which we had originally rebelled: Great
> Britain. 
> 
> Many analysts of the War of 1812 have tried to
> explain it
> as an economic or political conflict of limited
> importance.
> But it would have been hard to convince the American
> civilians who suffered what amounted to terrorist
> attacks
> by ruthless British raiding forces between 1812 and
> 1814
> that the conflict was either limited or explicable.
> The
> British assaults were astoundingly savage: women and
> children were mutilated and murdered along with
> civilian
> men and soldiers in a deliberate attempt to break
> the
> American people’s will to fight. These efforts
> reached
> their culmination in the last days of August 1814,
> when a
> squadron of British ships loaded with soldiers and
> sailors
> sailed into Chesapeake Bay and up the Patuxent River
> with a
> terrifying objective: to burn the city of Washington
> to the
> ground. 
> 
> The British force succeeded in this goal. By the
> night of
> Aug. 24, the White House, the Capitol, the Library
> of
> Congress and many other buildings emblematic of both
> the
> newborn capital city and the infant country itself
> were
> engulfed in flames. The government had been
> evacuated at
> the last minute, its officers (including President
> James
> Madison) scattering across the countryside. British
> action
> against remaining American soldiers and civilians
> continued
> to be, in many cases, merciless. 
> 
> The questions asked by Americans in the aftermath of
> this
> momentous event were some of the same that I have
> heard all
> over our city and country in recent days: Why here?
> Why
> this? 
> 
> The War of 1812 had little to do with specific
> political
> grievances or economic rivalries. It was prosecuted
> by the
> British because of a deep anxiety over the spread of
> American democratic republicanism. Having seen the
> bloody
> anarchy that had overtaken France during its
> revolution and
> having watched the United States peacefully and
> dramatically multiply its territory through the
> Louisiana
> Purchase, the British Empire — a stratified society
> still
> largely controlled by its aristocracy and
> constitutional
> monarchy — had grown deeply fearful that the spread
> of
> American-style democratic rebellion would mean not
> only
> economic competition abroad but also uprisings at
> home. In
> short, the British gratuitously destroyed important
> structures in Washington (and killed many innocent
> people)
> because those buildings were obnoxious symbols of
> American
> values whose spread and propagation the London
> government
> feared would spell the disempowerment of their own. 
> 
> The British were right to fear as much, for in time
> it was
> indeed the rise of the United States that set the
> example
> for populations in colonies around the world to
> seize their
> own destinies and put an end to the imperial,
> socially
> regimented system on which British power depended.
> True, in
> the 20th century the United States and Britain would
> become
> allies in order to face the the common enemies of
> imperial
> Germany and, later, Nazi and Japanese
> totalitarianism.
> Nevertheless, it was the spread of American values
> that put
> an end to the colonialism and imperialism that were
> the
> practical and spiritual lifeblood of the British
> Empire. 
> 
> Similarly, it is the spread of American values —
> individualistic, democratic, materialistic and, yes,
> in
> many ways crass and exploitative American values —
> that
> terrorist groups and the traditionalist, socially
> repressive societies that support them now fear.
> This fear
> has driven them to emulate the British forces of
> 1814 by
> damaging and destroying a group of structures that
> are
> among the most familiar symbols of contemporary
> American
> power. 
> 
> Thus the why. But why here? Washington is perhaps
> understandable, but why New York? 
> 
> The engine that runs the juggernaut that is
> expansionist
> American democratic capitalism (which is the force
> that
> opens the way for American cultural predominance) is
> housed, chiefly, in a comparatively few high-profile
> buildings at the southern tip of Manhattan Island.
> Americans look (or in the case of the World Trade
> Center,
> looked) on these buildings as some of the most
> distinctive
> symbols of all that our city and nation can achieve
> and
> have achieved. 
> 
> Our enemies in this war, by contrast, looked at them
> and
> saw — still see — the death of their own values,
> their own
> ways of life, their effective autonomy. Such
> perception
> breeds both malice and fear. Inside those buildings,
> the
> people behind this attack believe, is where the end
> of the
> societies they come from and the values that they
> live by
> was and is being planned (whether consciously or
> not), and
> there is where the erosion must be stopped. The
> terrorist
> obsession with the World Trade Center was, in this
> light,
> not irrational. In fact it was, viewed in the
> context of a
> war of cultures, entirely understandable. 
> 
> That context must now be fully realized by our side
> in this
> conflict. We must all match the sudden comprehension
> and
> bravery of the hijacked passengers aboard United
> Airlines
> Flight 93, who, realizing that their plane was going
> to be
> used as a flying weapon of mass destruction,
> immediately
> rose to challenge their captors, thus sacrificing
> their own
> lives to prevent a fourth crash that could have
> killed
> thousands more Americans. 
> 
> The people of this country, it has often been truly
> said,
> have a very bad sense of their own heritage, and New
> Yorkers tend to be among the worst offenders in this
> area.
> We have been known to pull down historic structures
> with
> remarkably little concern, to crumble and pave over
> our
> past in order to make way for what we hope will be
> an even
> more profitable future. But there are moments when
> we must
> overcome this blind tendency and look to our history
> for
> both inspiration and solace. We know in our
> collective
> memory the nature of this struggle; that
> understanding must
> now move from our subconscious to the very forefront
> of our
> minds so that we can accept the full dimensions of
> the
> conflict that will very soon engulf the lives of not
> only
> New Yorkers and Washingtonians but all Americans. 
> 
> Yes, this is war, and in all likelihood it will be a
> vicious and sustained one. What our enemies want is
> nothing
> short of an end to our predominance, and they will
> not
> forsake terrorism until either they attain that
> result or
> we make such behavior prohibitively, horrifyingly
> expensive. And this worst assault on the United
> States in
> its history happened in New York City because it
> symbolizes
> all that those same enemies loathe and fear most:
> diversity, licentiousness, avarice and freedom. Now,
> as we
> go about the process of adjusting ourselves to this
> new
> world of terrible conflict, we can and must take
> heart from
> that one seemingly paradoxical historical
> observation: both
> as New Yorkers and as Americans, we have been in
> this new
> world before. 
> 
> Caleb Carr, a novelist and historian, is a
> contributing
> editor of ‘‘MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military
> History.’’
> 
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/23/magazine/23TERROR.2.html?ex=1002378721&ei=1&en=6816dbed16c5fc6d
> 
> 
> 
> HOW TO ADVERTISE
> ---------------------------------
> For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters
> 
> or other creative advertising opportunities with The
> 
> New York Times on the Web, please contact Alyson 
> Racer at alyson@nytimes.com or visit our online
> media 
> kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo
> 
> For general information about NYTimes.com, write to 
> help@nytimes.com.  
> 
> Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company 



=====
---
Fatima Lasay | fats@hoydigiteer.org | www.hoydigiteer.org
Key Fingerprint = 43 5F 55 60 41 54 93 7A 1F 23 0B BF AF FD A1 9B



_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold