Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Not Understanding Nationalism

Nicholas D. Kristof, writing on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times on February 14, 2006, said that
The single biggest mistake we have made since World War II has been the failure to appreciate nationalsm, whether in China, Southest Asia or Latin America -- or, now, Iraq. Given the origins of the U.S -- an insurgency fueled by the maladroit policies of King George III, who never undersood American nationalism -- you'd think we would be more sensitive to such sentiments....
There never was any "American nationalism" until George III created it. Judging from the documents, speeches, and slogans I learned in American History way back when I was in school, the colonists wanted only the same privileges that the king's subjects enjoyed back home in England.

The slogan "taxation without representation is tyranny," attributed to Massachusetts politician James Otis, asks for representation, not national identity. The opening of the Declaration of Independence (1776),
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another ...
refers to "one people," not "one nation." And its bottom line was
That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that as FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full Power to levy war ... and do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of right do.
Recall that "state" at that time meant a region with its own sovereign goverment, not a portion of a larger region subject to a higher government.

A year later, the Articles of Confederation (1777) read:
Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the states of [list]. I. The Stile of this Confederacy shall be "The United States of America". II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled. III. The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare....
The colonies were to be sovereign states, "united" for specific purposes only.

Even the Constitution, which begins
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
and then goes directly into formal detail, does not specifically refer to an "American nation."

It wasn't that King George didn't understand American nationalism. There was no American nationalism until the colonists were forced, by his own blundering intransigence, to conclude that the rights they thought they deserved could be obtained only by forming their own nation. George III didn't misunderstand American nationalism, he created it.

So in Iraq, which contains mutually hostile Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds within its borders, the blundering American occupation might unite these factions to create a new Iraqi nationalism.

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