Should the U.S. Offer Iraq Statehood?

[JosephTheLibertarian]

What do you think? Make a US state out of Iraq?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/906278/posts

Despite the endless repetition from campus Trotskyists and unreconciled supporters of Ohio Senator Robert Taft’s 1952 presidential bid, the United States of America is not now, nor has it ever been, an empire.


If the United States were an empire, the Stars and Stripes would today be flying over Ottawa, Mexico City, Havana, Panama City, Managua, San Salvador, Manila, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Saigon, and Kuwait City. At least.


The United States does not have colonial ambitions, and that defines imperialism. We back friendly foreign regimes and sometimes aid even unfriendly ones, when we perceive it in our strategic interest. Too often the enemy of our enemy is a friend, even if the “friend” is as miserable as Stalin, Mao, Marcos, Somoza, or Saddam, and too often we’ve had to clean up the mess afterwards.


But there is nothing that I can find in the Federalist Papers, in the Constitution of the United States -- even in the writings of Old Rightists and New Leftists -- that says the maximum number of states allowed in the Union is 50, or that for a state to be added to the union its people have to be English speaking.


America is not a territory. It is a revolution. Its founding document declares,


We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.


The Declaration of Independence is not merely applicable to a particular time and place. The least important thing about it is the secession of colonies from its homeland. It is a statement of how human affairs should be organized, and is as applicable in Asia - or on Mars - as it was to Massachusetts and Virginia.


So the question needs to be asked. If the peoples of Iraq, just liberated from a brutal dictator, ever voted in a referendum that their future lay with the Americans who have spent their blood and treasure to free them, would it be imperialism, or merely American, to welcome them into the Union?


We say we believe in separation of church and state. Should we keep a state out of the union because the majority of its people are of a different religion than most of us? Utah doesn’t seem to have been much of a mismatch, has it?


English is not their first language. But if one added up the square mileage of all the neighborhoods in the United States where English isn’t spoken as a first language, might not it equal the square mileage of Iraq?


Iraq would not be physically connected to the United States. But neither is Hawaii. And just a few years before it became a state, the most common first language of Hawaii was Japanese.


I can hear the howls already: This proves American imperialism! It’s about the oil! He wants Iraq’s oil!


Not me. I want orbital solar-power satellites, interplanetary nuclear spaceships, and countertop cold fusion. If fifty years from now the United States is still burning petroleum, America will have failed the test of progressive capitalism.


Like most Americans, I’m a provincial isolationist at heart. It took hijacked American commercial passenger jetliners being crashed into American office buildings for me even to notice that there were foreigners who really hated us. Americans like me don’t even like foreigners enough to want to colonize them.


But we don’t define America by race, religion, or ethnicity. If our cultural strength has come by inviting diverse foreigners to immigrate to our shores, is it much different to invite twenty-four million of them to bring their country with them? I don’t recall reading anywhere that a necessary precondition for becoming an American was being homeless and penniless.


I know this is a long shot. The American Bill of Rights is a Harsh Mistress. Becoming an American – becoming a person who defines his or her identity not by the past but in possibilities for the future, and habituating easygoing tolerance rather than inbred xenophobia – is hard work.


But wasn’t that the point of America in the first place?

 

[hypnagogue]

This is almost as stupid as "They'll greet us as liberators."

It took hijacked American commercial passenger jetliners being crashed into American office buildings for me even to notice that there were foreigners who really hated us.

Perhaps he'd prefer to wait until the Iraqis fly some planes into their local American government facilities before he figures out they don't like Americans and sure as hell don't want to live like them.

 

[PatriotOne]

Despite the endless repetition from campus Trotskyists and unreconciled supporters of Ohio Senator Robert Taft’s 1952 presidential bid, the United States of America is not now, nor has it ever been, an empire.

If the United States were an empire, the Stars and Stripes would today be flying over Ottawa, Mexico City, Havana, Panama City, Managua, San Salvador, Manila, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Saigon, and Kuwait City. At least.

I had to stop reading the article after paragraph two. If the writer can not get the basic facts right then he's not worth reading. America is not building an empire for America. It is building an empire for World government....including sacrificing America.

 

[AmericaFyeah92]

this is dangerous thinking, to say the least.

Ya, integrating an arab country that has suffered 40 years of dictatorship and is now awash with violent Islamists into the Union would be a great fucking idea. Why not Eastern Europe and Japan too, since we have troops there? Must be nice living in imaginationland.

 

[votefreedomfirst]

\Must be nice living in imaginationland.

 

[The_Orlonater]

Let's make the world a state!!!!!!11

 

[Liberty Star]

Now why do they deserve freedom and statehood?

But seriously , we should wait till Oil comes down before granting them freedom and statehood LOL

 

[Truth Warrior]

NO, we can't afford to build the interstate highways system to Iraq. <IMHO> Hawaii is bad enough.

 

[FrankRep]

NO, we can't afford to build the interstate highways system to Iraq. <IMHO> Hawaii is bad enough.

Just make Taxpayers pay for it!

I'm pretty good at this, I should get into politics.

 

[constituent]

that is clever.

 

[SeanEdwards]

I think it's a more ethical position than the usual "setup a puppet dictatorship and profit" gameplan that we've been running since forever.

 

[AmericaFyeah92]

more ethical, maybe. but completely batshit insane nonetheless

 

[muzzled dogg]

i wonder who iraq's electoral votes would go for...