Mark Twain On Iraq
John Shirley has posted a few remarks of Mark Twain's, in context of the current Iraq War:
Mark Twain described the war in the Philippines, against insurgents, as a quagmire: “We were there to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial.” Sound familiar? “It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feelingof the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now--why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation.
I still prefer the War Prayer. More of Mr. Clemens's essays on war and imperialism can be read here.
Mark Twain described the war in the Philippines, against insurgents, as a quagmire: “We were there to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial.” Sound familiar? “It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feelingof the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now--why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation.
I still prefer the War Prayer. More of Mr. Clemens's essays on war and imperialism can be read here.
Tags: Mark Twain
posted by Management at 2:11 AM
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WHAT MARK TWAIN SAID ABOUT OUR WAR IN IRAQ
In the winter of 1898 the battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor. Hearst newspapers said it had been torpedoed by the Spanish. Maritime experts said it had blown up because of accidental combustion in its coal storage. But in order to justify an invasion of Cuba, newspapers dutifully attributed the explosion to a torpedo and howled for revenge.
In the early 1960s the USS Maddox was reported to have been attacked by Vietnamese gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin. President Johnson used the supposed attack as a pretext for escalating war against Vietnamese communists. Research, widely reported in mainstream media, recently confirmed that there never was an attack by the Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin.
In 2003 the Bush administration used falsified and distorted intelligence reports to justify an invasion of Iraq...
The word used by dissenting voices to describe this kind of thing in 1898 was imperialism. Mark Twain--that is, Samuel Clemens--described himself as an “anti-imperalist“ and said: “I am opposed to the having the eagle put its talons on any other land.“ According to Ron Powers' biography of Clemens, Mark Twain, A Life, the American clergy at the time was overwhelmingly in support of this imperialism, often tying it in to God-inspired “manifest destiny“, with distinct racial overtones, as when a Methodist minister said: “Christianized Anglo-Saxon blood...is the regnant force in this country. God is using the Anglo-Saxon to conquer the world for Christ...“
Mark Twain was moved to speak up when the Spanish ceded the Philippines to the USA. America's annexation of the Philippines was a flagrant hypocrisy, as in its war against Spain it was supposedly countering Spanish expansionism and protecting the Philippines from outside domination. Now it took over the Philippines and when Philippine patriots demanded independence, the USA put down that rebellion more ruthlessly than the Spanish ever had--besides thousands of Filipino soldiers, more than 200,000 Filipino civilians were killed in the war. (How did we kill these civilians? Did we shoot them, starve them, subject them to disease?) Mark Twain described the war in the Philippines, against insurgents, as a quagmire: “We were there to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial.” Sound familiar? “It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feelingof the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now--why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation.“ Elsewhere he said, “What we wanted, in the interest of Progress and Civilization, was the Archipelago, unencumbered by patriots struggling for independence.”
In another address, speaking of Imperialism in general, Mark Twain said: “I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched and dishonored from pirate-raids in Kiaochow, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and a towel but hide the looking glass...”
Mark Twain was indeed a forward looking writer--he looked forward, it seems, to our own time.
The War Prayer
by Mark Twain
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams -- visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation
*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory --
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause and think.
"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
Twain apparently dictated it around 1904-05; it was rejected by his publisher, and was found after his death among his unpublished manuscripts. It was first published in 1923 in Albert Bigelow Paine's anthology, Europe and Elsewhere.
The story is in response to a particular war, namely the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902, which Twain opposed. See Jim Zwick's page "Mark Twain on the Philippines" for more of Twain's writings on the subject.
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