Slavery and Race War

I am fairly sure there is connection between slavery and the support for war in the middle east and that it is important to understand it.

Looking at the electoral map of the USA, it is easy to see geographically the support for the Republicans who favour war is based in the south, especially the old slave owning states. And politically they are supported by the right wing Christians, especially the large Southern Baptists church. Coincidentally the Southern Baptist church was formed to promote slavery.

Maybe these are just coincidences so far, but there is more.

Slavery and the war in Iraq are both racist. The war is not against Moslems, in which case it would be a Holy War. This is more of a "Race War" against Arabs. There are several non-Arab, but Moslem countries in Africa and Asia that are not generally targetted by the pro-war faction, and happen to have little or no oil. Racism worked well in the days of slavery, it was impossible for black slaves to escape - even if they made it to Canada, they still faced life-long racism of a more subtle kind. To be fair, not all slavery is racist, but the type in the southern USA definitely ended up being overtly racist. No whites were ever owned by blacks.

The second similarity is the economic underpinning of slavery and middle east war. Imported slaves were needed to do the work to make America wealthy, because manpower was in short supply. Slavery was doomed from the moment that slaves could be replaced by industrial machinery. The machinery now needs oil which is getting to be in short supply. The oil has to be imported from the middle east, where there are a lot of Arabs. Slavery in 1800 was the way to get work done, and oil in 2009 is the way to get work done.

The third element to consider is cruelty. Slavery was cruel, not by accident, but by American law. No mercy was permitted to the slaves. This element is present in today's race/oil war, where torture of prisoners is the debate of the day. Pro-war people generally approve - especially the southern conservatives and formerly pro-slavery churches. And I guess it's not too surprising that General Petraeus has come out against torture. But he is from New York, with a Dutch-American background. And by the way, for southern Christians still arguing that waterboarding is not torture, the US government executed Japanese soldiers for war crimes where they were waterboarding US soldiers, and it was called torture.

Canada is not really free of the pro race war propaganda. Our very own Mark Steyn, who no longer lives here, has written another piece in MacLeans Magazine, called (if I remember "What Price Empathy") in which he argues that we cannot know for sure that most Moslem mother don't want their sons to grow up to be suicide bombers. This comment by Mark was to refute Condoleeza Rice's statement that most Arab mothers want their sons to get a University education. Although this may be a stupid argument from Mark, as usual it's hard to prove he's wrong. Well I'm going to give my support to Condoleeza for once. That's right, I think that Moslem mothers want their sons get an education rather than to be blown up. On this very question may rest the fate of world peace.

Cartoon by Steve Bell
Guardian
19 July 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk