This Ain’t No John Wayne Movie

Title: Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

Rating: 4 Stars

When I was young, we played Cowboys and Indians, and we always wanted to be the Cowboys. We’d watch old Westerns where brown actors of various ethnicities would pretend to be Indians. We’d always root for the settlers or the cavalry in the battles against the treacherous, barbaric Indians.

Eventually we all grew up and realized that the story is not that simple. We learned about the Trail of Tears. We learned about treaties made that were broken. Even so, this more balanced history was usually told from a Western point of view.

In Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, we read a history from a completely different perspective. Much like Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, here you hear voices that you never usually hear from. The history is told from the perspective of Native Americans. White people, when mentioned, are often called by the Indian name that was given to them by the Native Americans.

The book covers Native American / White American relationships in the period of time roughly between 1860 to 1890.

Spoiler alert: Things don’t end well for the Native Americans.

This book outlines it in deep, depressing detail. It wasn’t just one treaty, It wasn’t just one tribe. It wasn’t just one part of the country. It wasn’t just one presidential administration. It didn’t matter if the tribes were peaceful or warlike. It didn’t matter if the tribes were hunters or farmers.

It wasn’t like the Native American chiefs were idiots. They understood that they stood no chance against the endless swarm of white settlers and prospectors. They knew that any battles that they won would be purely tactical victories. They’d lose any real war with the US military. They knew that once the US army was after them, that their only choices were death in battle, starvation while being pursued, or death by neglect once they were placed in a reservation far from their homes.

Over and over, the US government would come to a tribe living peacefully in their native lands. For some reason, the government needed that land. Usually it was for railroads, transit for white settlers, or valuable minerals found on the land.

The government would greet the chiefs with some nonsense greetings from the Great Father back East. The government representatives would offer some shady deal to take valuable land from the Native Americans that they’d been using for centuries. The government would promise payments to the tribe. The government would promise only to take some of the land and leave the rest of the land to the tribes as long as the grass grows green.

Well, it turns out, at least during that part of history, that the grass would only grow green for a couple of years. The US government would come back soon to take even more land. In some cases, it would take all of the land and try to move the tribe completely out of their homeland.

The chiefs, to repeat, were not idiots. They often were parties to the previous agreements and knew what was agreed to. However, most of them were illiterate, so what was verbally agreed to would be different than the signed contract.

In some cases, the agreement was simply ignored. One particular agreement required something like three quarters of a tribe’s men agreement to change. There was no way that was going to happen. The US army invaded one of the tribe’s campgrounds and murdered women and children that were living there. In response, the tribe’s warriors attacked the US army. The US government then identified the tribe as hostile and just took the land from them.

Black Kettle was a chief of the Southern Cheyenne tribe. Black Kettle understood the futility of fighting the US army and, to the frustration of his more militant tribal members, consistently sought peaceful conciliation with the US government. He would proudly fly the American flag over his tipi. Shortly after signing a peace agreement and settling into the Sand Creek reservation, the 3rd Colorado Cavalry attacked the reservation and killed many women and children. He was shot in front of his tipi waving the American flag and a white flag. Later he was shot and killed by Custer’s 7th Cavalry Regiment in yet another attack on a peaceful village.

This was not an uncommon occurrence. Native American chiefs were captured and arrested during ostensible peace negotiations. The US army committed atrocities against women and children. Native Americans were herded onto reservations in land that they were not acclimated to. Once on the reservation, they were denied the ability to hunt. They were provided insufficient food, shelter, and clothing. Military officers or agency representatives that displayed compassion for the Native Americans were roundly criticized and routinely reassigned.

This wasn’t just a couple of tribes. The Navajo, Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Apache, Kiowa, Comanche, Nez Perce, and Utes all were cheated by the US government.

In hindsight, it was clear that the Native American tribes were always going to be caught underneath the wave of white immigration. The fact that our government dealt with them in such a manner is just one more blot in our notorious history of racism.

 

Bullets, Not Butter

Title: War On Peace

Rating: 4 Stars

This is another in a line of books that I’ve read about the decline of diplomacy as US policy becomes ever so more militarized in purely transactional agreements. This book highlights how our relationships have fundamentally changed in a number of select countries. Given that Farrow had first hand experience in a number of these countries, he brings his personal frustrations to bear.

Foreign policy between sovereign nations is naturally a long, complicated, painful process that yields at best half a loaf for all parties involved. Historically the US has understood this and, given its unique role as the leading nation, has been willing to participate in this difficult endeavor.

It’s become clear that this is no longer the case. Donald Trump is certainly the nadir of rational foreign policy, but the decline of the State Department has been ongoing for decades. Funding for the State Department has been in relative decline under both Republican and Democratic administrations since President Clinton.

In the vacuum of this decline has risen the CIA and the military. This has resulted in classified activities nearly invisible to public scrutiny. This also produces purely short term transactional policy decisions that inevitably result in long term blowback.

In the wake of 9/11, this trend has dramatically accelerated. To see evidence of this, look no further than Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Regarding Pakistan, the US used to actively work with the Pakistani government on such issues as supporting democratic government and controlling nuclear proliferation. After 9/11, that all changed. The US interest in Pakistan appeared to be purely interested in its role as a partner in the Global War On Terror. In that capacity, the US supplied Pakistan with massive amounts of military hardware.

Pakistan, in turn, is acting in its own sovereign interests. Pakistan has an interest in keeping the Taliban viable. So, some of the funds that the US directed to Pakistan to help defeat the Taliban actually ended up in the hands of the Taliban. The US had provisions in place to stop aid to Pakistan if it was engaging in nuclear proliferation. Despite clear evidence that it was not in compliance, the transactional value of keeping Pakistan nominally in the GWOT dictated that the flow of arms could not be stopped. Knowing this, Pakistan knew that it could act without constraint.

Similarly, in Afghanistan, the US said all of the right words in terms of setting up a stable democracy. When push came to shove, instead of committing to the decades long hard work of helping this to happen, the US instead has turned a blind eye (and in some cases, lending active support) to brutal warlords that have assumed prominent positions in the government. Some of these warlords are known to have committed such brutal war crimes as mass executions of prisoners.

In the near anarchy of Somalia, a connected group of Sharia courts called the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) wielded a significant amount of power. They were brutal in their judgments but also was the closest thing to justice that existed in that war torn country. Swept up into the GWOT, the US government became suspicious of the ICU. A number of African nations formed a loose coalition to try to bring order to Somalia. Not willing to yield control to this group, the US, again through the CIA and the military, instead incentivized its nearest proxy, Kenya, to invade Somalia and to overthrow the ICU.

In a purely short term transactional sense, this was successful. In its stead, Somalia was ruled by warlords, including some of the men that the US fought in the 1990s (eg Black Hawk Down). In the tatters of the ICU rose the terrorist group al-Shabaab. This group ended up aligning itself with al-Qaeda and was responsible for the brutal shopping mall attack in Nairobi.

In 2011, the Arab Spring swept through the Arab world. For the first time in recent memory, it appeared that Arab totalitarian governments were in danger. Governments were overthrown in nations such as Tunisia and Libya. There was hope in the air.

The Arab Spring swept through Egypt. Hosni Mubarak was overthrown and imprisoned. Democratic elections were held and the Muslim Brotherhood was elected. The Egyptian military refused to honor the result, overthrew the elected government, and took over. In the resulting protests, the military fired on protesters, killing many.

In all of this, the US had no leverage to use against the Egyptian military. The US provides significant military aid and it specifically states that the aid is to be cut off in the event of a coup. Despite it clearly being a coup, the US refused to use name it as such. The aid continues to flow freely.

In the Trump administration, not only is diplomacy sidelined but is actually being reversed. For instance, the US has pulled out of the Paris Agreement. At the time that it pulled out, the only other non signatories were Syria and Nicaragua. They have both since signed on. Trump agreed to talks with North Korea with zero input from any diplomats. Shockingly enough, the only result from the talks was elevating Kim Jong Un on the world stage.

As the US retreats from the world stage, countries such as China and Russia will fill the void. Allies that look to us for leadership will look elsewhere. The post war order that made the Long Peace possible seems to be fraying.

This is all obvious very depressing to read. If Trump is re-elected and his policies run for a full eight years, the changes might be irreversible.