You can say what you like about Britain, but we have certainly never restricted the Throne to people born here. Has anyone born abroad ever been Prime Minister? They undoubtedly could be. Oh, yes, of course. Andrew Bonar Law. Canadian. And therefore, at the time, British. (As well as several born in what is now the Irish Republic, of course.) For I cannot see how the “natural born citizen” requirement can survive the transition to empire.
It really cannot be long now before the largely hereditary military-industrial complex produces a candidate who is not only vehemently opposed to “big government” despite having been a lifelong, and not first generation, ward of the federal government, but who is an equally vehement American chauvinist despite having been born, again quite conceivably like one or both parents, in a far-flung colony technically classified as a military base.
So far, candidates have been rather questionably allowed from territories that had since become states, or from what were American territories then even of they had since ceased to be so. But the nature of the American imperium is such that huge numbers of at least ostensibly the most patriotic Americans are going to spend their most fertile years on what is at least officially foreign territory, with many entire families of them not actually residing on American soil for several successive generations.
Meanwhile, any belief in “al-Qaeda”, or in any conceivable connection between the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Shia-persecuting “Taliban”, or in “the global terrorist network”, or in “Taliban” distinct from the Pashtun as a whole, or in any connection between Afghanistan and 9/11, or in any connection between Iraq and 9/11, or in WMD in Iraq, or in such WMD as a threat to any Western country even if they had existed, or in an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, or in such a programme as a threat to any Western country even if it existed, has always put those who held it on exactly the same level as birthers, or as truthers, or as those who liken Obama to Hitler, or as those who likened Bush to Hitler, and as the followers of Lyndon LaRouche.
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'Any belief in “al-Qaeda” .. has always put those who held it on exactly the same level as the followers of Lyndon LaRouche.' Really?
ReplyDeleteYes. As will become manifest, if it is not already doing so, when the thing carries on effortlessly after the death of Osama bin Laden. It is a tendency, a sensibility, a mentality, if that. There is certainly no such organisation as "al-Qaeda".
ReplyDeleteObama referred to al-Qaeda in his speech yesterday as 'an organisation headed by Osama bin Laden'. Does that put him on the same level as the followers of Lyndon LaRouche?
ReplyDeleteHe never said any such thing, nor would he. The days of intelligence operatives being driven up the wall by such utterances, motivated by malice on the part of Cheney or Rumsfeld, motivated by sheer idiocy on the part of Bush, are over.
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