07/07/2007
There are parallels between VDARE.com and Antiwar.com. Both focus very tightly on our respective issues. Both serve as arsenals, where sympathizers can easily find ammunition and refreshment, otherwise sparsely available in the MSM desert. Both are led by men who provide radical and decisive strategic visions on the topics they cover — Peter Brimelow and Justin Raimondo. But our paths rarely cross.
Yesterday they did. On Independence Day, the US military in Iraq staged a political demonstration, swearing into citizenship 161 soldiers in a massive ceremony in Baghdad. The quality of the proceedings was hallmarked by the presence of Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, flown in for the occasion.
(U.S. troops naturalized in Iraq By Molly Hennessey-Fiske Los Angeles Times July 5 2007) Unsurprisingly to his regular readers, Justin Raimondo did not collapse into sentimental mush:
In the face of this administration’s rhetorical antics, one can only shake one’s head, get some earplugs, and try to look away. The president’s speechwriters have a feel for the worst of the American cultural ethos. Their prose is like the obscene online antics of Paris Hilton, or an episode of American Idol: vulgar, attention-seeking, and utterly profane.
The World Turned Upside-Down by Justin Raimondo Antiwar.com July 6 2007
But, as usual, he has cogent political reasons for disgust:
Whatever one’s position on the immigration question, opponents of our present foreign policy of relentless aggression can hopefully all agree that the practice of granting citizenship to foreigners if they sign up for the U.S. military is reprehensible and ought to be stopped forthwith. Because what it means is that, as Americans grow tired of and openly hostile to foreign wars and refuse to fight them, the War Party can always turn to an overseas contingent of willing cannon fodder ready to risk all for the chance to live a decent life. (VDARE.com emphasis)
This in my view is a very serious point. Clearly avoiding implementing a draft and reducing the brutal burden thrust on the National Guard would tremendously help this Administration (and the next) to keep the Iraq venture going
It’s not inconceivable that U.S. military recruiters will soon be setting up shop overseas, bribing potential GIs with green cards and the promise of a bright future in America, where the streets are paved with gold. Every ambitious thug, every upwardly mobile Mexican mafia "enforcer," every Russian skinhead with his eyes on the prize will flock to these recruiting centers … Americans won’t fight unjust wars that aren’t in our national interest, but a foreigner, desperate — for whatever reason — to leave his or her homeland and come to America for a chance at a better life, is a different matter altogether. Why shouldn’t they join up, no matter what the justice or the purpose of the war?
However, Raimondo sees deeper than this. He asks the central VDARE.com question: the National Question:
As we add provinces to our overseas empire, the influx of refugees, green-card-holders, asylum-seekers, and naturalized military recruits will effect a sea change in the electorate and in Americans' attitudes toward the prospect of becoming an imperial power … All empires are, almost by definition, multicultural entities: all catalysts for the importation of a large immigrant population, which in turn had an impact on the culture and politics of the imperial homeland … before our leaders make the successful transition from a plain republican cloth coat to the imperial purple there has to be a fundamental change in the traditional American character — and perhaps only a massive immigrant influx could accomplish it.
Pointing out that the Roman policy of employing foreign-born mercenaries led to these men, in the form of the Praetorian Guard, dominating Imperial politics in the later stages of the Empire, Raimondo says the unsayable:
I’m not saying that legions of foreign-born soldiers are going to pull off a coup against Our Dear Leader. What I am saying is that the political culture many of these newly recruited neo-Americans hail from hardly rules this out. Latin America, the largest source of immigration to America, has spawned many a military coup: indeed, south of the Rio Grande, this is something of a time-honored tradition. Something about the political culture of those lands encourages the cult of the Leader and militates against constitutionally limited government and the rule of law.
Alberto Gonzales — a call for you!
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.