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Busting Statues Is Like Burning Books

January 3, 2016 by Llewellyn King 2 Comments

By Llewellyn King

Messing with history is not a cool thing to do. But there is a lot of it going on; particularly, pulling down monuments or going after other people’s religious statues. This kind of heresy goes from the grotesque to the downright evil.

Topping my list of the grotesque is Nkotozo Qwabe, a young South African now studying as a Rhodes Scholar, who leads a movement to pull down the statue of Cecil John Rhodes at Oxford and, among other things, to ban the French flag from the campus. Compatriots of this ingrate have already removed a statue of Rhodes at South Africa’s University of Cape Town.

On the evil side is ISIS, and its ongoing destruction of antiquities in Iraq and Syria — most recently, the monumental ruins of the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria. With it, as with their razing of Hatra, Nineveh and Nimrud and other archaeological sites in Iraq, ISIS has turned to dust a world heritage: a cultural heritage and artifacts so precious that they rise above religion.

ISIS and the anti-Rhodes activists are trying to adjust history to passing present values. Knocking down an ancient temple or a statue is, in its way, book burning. It is destroying the record in order to distort the record.

Universities, here and abroad, are vulnerable to the demands of minority groups. Oxford has already removed one Rhodes plaque. At Princeton, students are demanding that Woodrow Wilson’s name be expunged for his support, as they see it, of white supremacy.

Decent people and institutions accede to the inane and foolish wants of minorities to appear reasonable to the unreasonable. Princeton has already gone some way down that slippery slope.

At Oxford, Qwabe is not content with just demonizing Rhodes. He has denounced the French for their colonial and current activities, and compared the French flag to the Nazi flag. And he has criticized Oxford for being Eurocentric. Why would it be anything else? Founded in 1096, it is the second-oldest European university.

Qwabe would have us, and the people of Africa, believe that Rhodes was a villain of unspeakable proportions, practicing racism and genocide. In reality, by today’s standards, he did some bad things and some very good ones, which include funding Qwabe’s attendance at Oxford.

Qwabe’s history is about as shaky as his gratitude. Rhodes was a controversial figure who believed absolutely in British exceptionalism as epitomized in the British Empire. He went to South Africa from England for his health and made a fortune in diamond mining. He entered politics and became prime minister of Cape Colony, on the tip of South Africa. There he seemed very enlightened, establishing a franchise that was open — as open as any at the time — and was not to be matched in South Africa until the fall of apartheid.

Where Rhodes’s dealings get murky is when he financed the push into what is now Zimbabwe. Rhodes defrauded the king of the Matabele, Lobengula, in the south of the country, but saved the Shona tribe, in the east and central region, from certain extinction at the hands of the Matabele, a newly arrived offshoot of the Zulus in South Africa who conquered lesser tribes, killed the men and boys, and forced the women into polygamous marriages.

Another good thing that Rhodes did was to cut off a chunk of South Africa, then known as Bechuanaland, now Botswana, from control by the Afrikaner Boers in 1895.

Rhodes also lavished his wealth on universities, including his alma mater Oxford and South African universities, including Cape Town, located on his former estate, and Rhodes, the eponymous university.

Rhodes did some reprehensible things but he believed in the public good as saw it — that being a manifestation of the British way of life, justice and values. Obliterating Rhodes’s historical role, and the few statues that point to it, is to meddle with the truth.

This same poison is at work on U.S. campuses, where student radicals bar speakers they disagree with from appearing. Punishing the memory of the great figures of history because they fail the social acceptability tests of the present is a disturbing part of the current academic scene, where free speech is under attack and free ideas are doctored to fit the values and prejudices of the moment.

There is a linkage between the thinking that is destroying the precious monuments of pre-Islamic civilization and punishing the memory of Rhodes and Wilson. The difference is only in degree. — For InsideSources


Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: British Empire, Cecil Rhodes, Hatra, Iraq, ISIS, Nimrud, Nineveh, Nkotozo Qwabe, Oxford University, Palmyra, Princeton, Rhodes Scholar, South Africa, Syria, University of Cape Town, Woodrow Wilson

The Riddle of the U.S. Snub of Jordan

October 10, 2015 by Llewellyn King Leave a Comment

By Llewellyn King

The continued refusal of the Obama administration to sanction the sale of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAVs) aircraft to Jordan provides a kind of window into the confusion and incoherence of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Next to Israel, little Jordan (population about 8 million) has been one of our best friends in the region. It has a peace treaty with Israel, and has been seen as a moderate force in the Arab world. Its royal family, Western-educated and bilingual in English, have been favorites, politically and socially, in London and Washington.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II was educated in England and the United States, having attended tony prep schools in both countries before he attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (as did his father, King Hussein), the British equivalent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, in 1980. Commissioned into the British Army as a second lieutenant, he served for a year in 1981 as a troop commander in the 13th/18th Royal Hussars.

Abdullah took a few years off from the military in the 1980s, studying at Pembroke College, Oxford and Georgetown University. But before becoming king in 1999, he served in Jordan’s army, where he rose to the rank of major general, and air force, where he was trained to fly Cobra attack helicopters – his father was an avid and daring helicopter pilot.

My sources tell me that Abdullah is a close friend of Secretary of State John Kerry.

Yet when Jordan came a-knockin’, the administration barred the door. This with them knowing well that the Predator and the Reaper, which is a larger and more sophisticated model, are not the only UAVs on the market. Both Israel and China are vendors of unmanned surveillance aircraft, and Jordan is actively being courted by them. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice cried.

The administration, while declaring its affection for Jordan, may have in mind that Jordan has been more friend than ally: Jordan did not support the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But why would that deter the Obama administration? It is because of the fight against ISIS that Jordan has requested permission to purchase unarmed Predators needed for surveillance, as well as armed ones.

The arguments for the sale, frequently championed by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., is that it is a win-win for the United States and Jordan. Jordan gets the best technology for surveillance that money can buy; the United States gets one more eye in the sky over Syria and Iraq, which share borders with Jordan.

Sources to the left and right of the foreign policy establishment in Washington tell me they are baffled by the administration’s reluctance. Policy wonks are wondering aloud, “What is the White House thinking? It will lose a sale and Jordan will buy inferior military hardware, while being shut out of a valuable source of surveillance intelligence. If China or Israel supply drones to Jordan, U.S. access to this intelligence may come with strings.”

It is easy to understand that the administration does not know what to do about Syria. What might have been done was not done. Four years ago, there might have been the diplomatic equivalent of a plea bargain with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, or we might have more effectively armed those rebelling against him, before those motivated by religious sectarianism became dominant.

But none of those missed opportunities justifies snubbing one of our only friends in the region, as chaos escalates beyond the wildest fears of many a Middle East Cassandra. The administration seems to have gone into a catatonic state in Middle East policy, feeling as though whatever it does will not work, and that its legacy will be written in failed states including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Hunter, who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said, “Damage has been done to U.S. relations with Jordan, but the simple act of approving drone exports would prevent further harm. If Jordanian policy, like President Obama’s, is to ‘degrade and ultimately destroy’ ISIS, why is the Obama administration refusing to provide an ally with the tools to do just that? ” — For InsideSources.com

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: drone, Iraq, ISIS, Jordan, King Abdullah II, Obama administration, Predator, Reaper, Rep. Duncan Hunter, Syria, UAV, unmanned aerial vehicle

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