Saturday, February 28, 2009
Iran
Barack on Iran in the first Presidential debate on 9/26/08
The United States has had tortuous relations with Tehran since the
Islamic revolution in 1979, but Pres. Obama's message speaks of "new beginnings" with the promise of a new year.
Pres. Obama’s message was released on YouTube by BBC News and the White House Web site on 3.20.09 with Persian-language subtitles on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian new year and start of an annual two-week long spring holiday . It comes almost 30 years after the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Iran, when militant students empowered by the Iranian revolution took over the American Embassy in Tehran and held more than 50 people hostage for 444 days.
Pres. Obama warned Iran’s leaders that their country’s access to what he called its “rightful place in the community of nations” would not be advanced by threats or by “terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions.”
"We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community. This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek, instead, engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect." - Pres. Obama
[Transcript: A New Year, A New Beginning ] [ Iran's response ]
Israeli president, Shimon Peres, issued an audio statement
Embedded video from CNN Video
Mr. Ahmedinejad's press advisor Ali-Akbar Javanfekr noted that Iran "welcomes" President Obama's call for better relations, but tempered his remarks with criticism of past U.S. policies towards Iran, in addition to calling for "concrete" actions from Mr. Obama.
"Mr. Obama has talked of change, but has taken no practical measures to redress America's past mistakes in Iran. If Mr. Obama takes a concrete action and makes fundamental changes to U.S. foreign policy towards other nations, including Iran, the Iranian government and people will not turn their back on him. Mr. Obama has referred to differences between Iran and the US. We believe that those differences stem from Washington's hostile policy towards Iran. Minor changes will not end the differences."
Ayatollah Khamenei said he sees no change in U.S. policy toward Iran
Friday, February 27, 2009
Israel (Jews) and Palestine (Arabs)
Canaan (Israel) belongs to the Jews/Hebrews:
* In Genesis, God promised the "land of Canaan" to the Jews - Abraham and Sarah's seed:
18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river [d] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates- 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites." [Genesis 15:18-21]
Genesis 17:4-8: 4 "As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram [Abram means exalted father] ; your name will be Abraham, [Abraham means father of many] for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God."
Genesis 17:19-21: 19 Then God said, "Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. [Isaac means he laughs ] I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. 20 And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. 21 But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year."
Genesis 18:10,11: 10 Then the LORD [Hebrew Then he ] said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son." Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. 11 Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing.
* While wandering in the desert of Beersheba [today it's a city in southern Israel], the Angel of the LORD said to Hagar about her son Ishmael in Genesis 16:11-12:The angel of the LORD also said to her: "You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, [Ishmael means God hears] for the LORD has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility [public or private enemy; unfriendliness; animosity. attacks of an enemy. animosity; enmity; opposition; violence; aggression; contention; warfare. violent action that is hostile and usually unprovoked. a state of deep-seated ill-will. the state of being hostile; antagonism or enmity. acts of war] toward [Or live to the east / of] all his brothers."
22 If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. 23 My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out. [Exodus 23:22,23 ]
1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 "Command the Israelites and say to them: 'When you enter Canaan, the land that will be allotted to you as an inheritance will have these boundaries... [Numbers 34:1,2]
* Israel has a right to exist as a Nation with its own land because God gave the land of Israel to the descendents of Isaac. Israel became a State in 1948.
Israel is the world's only predominantly Jewish state with a population of about 7.4 million people, of which approximately 5.57 million are Jewish. The largest ethnic minority group is the segment denominated as Arab citizens of Israel, while minority religious groups include Muslims, Christians, Druze, Samaritans and others, most of which are found within the Arab segment.
The president of Israel was Shimon Peres from July 15, 2007 to July 24, 2014. On June 10,2014, Reuven Rivlin was elected President of Israel.
The capital is Jerusalem. The official languages are Hebrew and Arabic. The Defense Minister is Ehud Barak and the Foreign Minister is Avigdor Lieberman.
The Former Prime Minister was Ehud Olmert (he was preceded by Ariel Sharon), he was succeeded by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mr. Ariel Sharon, a controversial military commander who rose to hold many of his nation’s top positions, suffered a stroke after shaking up Israeli politics at the height of his power. An architect of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, he stunned the world and his own constituents with a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. He abandoned the Likud Party he led as prime minister to form the centrist Kadima Party, and he was believed to be preparing for further territorial concessions to establish a Palestinian state when he became ill. Source: nytimes.com .
Sharon’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip in August 2005 was perhaps his biggest political gamble in a life of brash moves, which included joining the Jewish underground at 14 and building the security fence that separates Israel and the West Bank today. Formerly a zealous supporter of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories, Sharon had once urged Israelis to “run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours.” But in 2005, as prime minister, he ordered Israeli soldiers to forcibly evict some 8,000 Jewish settlers from two dozen communities in the Gaza Strip, ending the Israeli civilian and military presence inside the coastal enclave that Israel wrestled from Egypt in the 1967 war. The ramifications of the Israeli withdrawal are still debated and felt. Source: washingtonpost.com.
Palestinians seek a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital. In 2005, Israel pulled its troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip, now run by Hamas Islamists whom are opposed to the peace talks. Source: reuters.com.
He has been in a vegetative state,comatose for nearly eight years, since he suffered a stroke. Source: nytimes.com . Ariel Sharon, the Israeli warrior and former prime minister as famous for his ferocity in battling Arabs as for his turnaround decision to evacuate settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip, died 1.11.14. He was 85. Source: bloomberg.com.
Palestine is a name which has been widely used since Roman times to refer to the region that was earlier called Canaan, which spreads between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
Palestine's president is Mahmoud Abbas .
5.17.09 Q&A with PM Netanyahu of Israel. The common goal is peace . Pres. Obama and Netanyahu discuss U.S.-Israeli disagreements.
5.28.09 Speaking to reporters with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after their meeting, President Obama said he would "assume the best" about Israel's position on a two-state solution for Middle East peace.
6.5.09 American officials hope that by getting Israel to freeze settlement building on land where the Palestinians expect to build their future state, they can then press Saudi Arabia and other regional powers to offer Israel concessions like low-level trade or tourism. In addition, stopping the construction would remove a major concern of the Palestinians that their land is slowly disappearing under settler housing. In his Cairo speech, the president again called for an end to the settlement building.
3.7.10 U.S. envoy George Mitchell has won Israeli and Palestinian approval for indirect peace talks
3.7.10 VP Joe Biden in Israel to restart peace negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Israel again angered the Palestinians by announcing the construction of more than 10 new apartments inside the West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit. Israeli leaders declared a partial, temporary freeze on new construction last year. Officials said their decision Monday was an exception, due to what they described as safety and infrastructure issues.
Israeli commentators are calling Biden's visit significant. He is perceived here as a powerful figure within the Obama administration, one who is well-acquainted with Middle East politics, having known every Israeli prime minister for the past four decades. Biden highlights U.S.-Israel ties and he promises U.S. commitment to Israel's security
The vice president, who will be the most senior American official to visit Israel since Obama came to office in January 2009, faces a tough sell, Israeli officials and analysts say.
Many Israelis are distrustful of Obama's outreach to the Muslim world, a priority he highlighted with high-profile visits to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and, later this month, to Indonesia.
"If Israel is supposed to make sacrifices for a peace deal, the Israeli public has to be convinced it is receiving sufficient support from the United States," an Israeli official said, calling Biden's visit the beginning of that process.
U.S.-Israeli tensions flared over Obama's early push for a complete Jewish settlement freeze, although his administration has at least temporarily backed off, embracing a more limited, 10-month moratorium on new building announced in November.
Obama began his term with a push for Mideast peace, prodding Israel to freeze its construction of West Bank settlements that swallow up land the Palestinians want for a future state. But that call came just as Netanyahu took over in Israel, and though the Israeli leader scaled back settlement construction, he would not accept a full freeze.
Obama's insistence on a total settlement freeze is seen by many in the region to have backfired by encouraging Palestinians to stake out a position that was politically untenable for Israel's hawkish government.
The Palestinians are still saying they will not talk directly to Israel unless it freezes settlement building completely.
But hours after Biden's arrival Monday, the U.S. announced the sides would begin indirect peace negotiations. The fact that the discussions will be held through a U.S. mediator attests to the estrangement between the Israelis and Palestinians, who have been speaking to each other directly, on and off, since the early 1990s.
Vice President Joe Biden said the United States condemns Israel's decision to build 1,600 housing units in a Jerusalem neighborhood.
3.9.10 PM Benjamin Netanyahu and VP Joe Biden's Joint Press Conference
Also, Biden in the Middle East speaking with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at Ramallah and speaking at Tel Aviv University in Israel.
3.11.10 Biden speaking at the Tel Aviv University in Israel
VP Joe Biden said the U.S. condemns Israel's decision to build 1,600 housing units in a Jerusalem neighborhood. Israel announced East Jerusalem homes as Biden visits. PM Netanyahu apologized for disrupting the visit of VP Biden. But he has vowed to continue building settlements in Jerusalem.
NOTE: The international community considers East Jerusalem occupied territory. Building on occupied land is illegal under international law, but Israel regards East Jerusalem - which it annexed in 1967 - as its territory. Palestinians claim the area as a future capital. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital.
7 Reasons to Support Israel
3.22.10 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speak at the AIPAC @ the Washington Convention Center.
Video link and Transcript
PM Benjamin Netanyahu's speech
Benjamin Netanyahu
Netanyahu, Obama meet at White House
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has held talks with US President Barack Obama about settlements in East Jerusalem.
3.25.10: Netanyahu ends U.S. visit without resolving settlement dispute. On 4.22.10 the president's special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, states Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized that "there will be no freeze" on construction opposed by Palestinians and the United States. Israel seized East Jerusalem from Jordan during the Six Day War in 1967 and considers it part of it's sovereign capital - a claim not recognized by the international community. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the future capital of their state.
Timeline: Israel and Iran statements
4.19.10 Israel Will Not Sign Non-Proliferation Treaty : Netanyahu will not go against "long standing policy" and sign treaty.
6.29.10: The Palestinians want a state in areas Israel captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, with East Jerusalem as their capital. Mr. Netanyahu has accepted the idea of a Palestinian state, but with strict conditions, and without Palestinian control of East Jerusalem.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in southern Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the west and southwest, Zambia to the northwest, and Mozambique to the east and northeast.
The Capital and largest city is Harare.
Zimbabwe has 16 official languages,with English, Shona, and Ndebele the most commonly used.
The president was Robert Mugabe from 1987 to 2017. On November 15, 2017, in the wake of over a year of protests against his government, as well as Zimbabwe's rapidly declining economy, Mugabe was placed under house arrest by the country's national army in a coup d'état.
Embedded video from CNN Video
Wednesday,11.15.17: Zimbabwe is under military control after the army seizes power from Mugabe. Zimbabwe's military leaders have seized control of the impoverished southern African nation, placing longtime leader Robert Mugabe under house arrest and deploying armored vehicles to the streets of the capital, Harare.
Mugabe, 93, the world's oldest living leader, was unable to leave his home, according to Jacob Zuma, the President of neighboring South Africa. Troops were reportedly stationed at Zimbabwe's Parliament and the presidential palace.
President Robert Mugabe and his family are "safe and sound," according to Zimbabwe's military — but his decades in power are seemingly at an end, after Mugabe, 93, was forcefully pushed aside. Both the ruling party and the military insist there was no coup.
"We are only targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes that are causing social and economic suffering in the country in order to bring them to justice," the Zimbabwe Defense Forces said on Wednesday, adding, "As soon as we have accomplished our mission we expect that the situation will return to normalcy." But it will be a new normal for Zimbabwe, which has been led by Mugabe since the 1980s.
11.16.17 Update: Mugabe's exit is 'a done deal' but Zimbabwe is still in limbo. He died 9.6.2019 at the age of 95.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia , is an Arab country and the largest country of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Sunni Muslim country with the world's largest oil reserves. The Capital is Riyadh. The King is Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud.
King Abdullah appoints the first woman [Norah al-Faiz] as vice minister for women's education.
After King Abdullah's death on 1.23.15, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud became the King.
Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was crowned Prince on 6.21.17. He promises to lead his country 'back to moderate Islam.'
The Hejazi region, where the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina are located, is the destination of the Ḥajj pilgrimage, and often deemed to be the cradle of Islam.
Islam is the state religion of Saudi Arabia and its law requires that all citizens be Muslims. Neither Saudi citizens nor guest workers have the right of freedom of religion.
The Country profile , the CIA Factbook, and the history.
PEOPLE:
* The population estimated to be about 27.6 million.
* Saudi Arabia is known as the birthplace of Islam. They enforce strict Islamic law (sharia) and occasionally metes out punishments based on the ancient legal code of an eye-for-an-eye.
* Most Saudis are ethnically Arab. Some are of mixed ethnic origin and are descended from Turks, Iranians, Indonesians, Indians, Africans, etc.
GOVERNMENT:
* The central institution of Saudi Arabian Government is the monarchy. The Basic Law adopted in 1992 declared that Saudi Arabia is a monarchy ruled by the sons and grandsons of King Abd Al Aziz Al Saud, and that the Holy Qur'an is the constitution of the country, which is governed on the basis of Islamic law (Shari'a).
The Al Saud dynasty's
The House of Al Saud traces its origins to the 18th century emir, Muhammad ibn Saud, whose family ruled large parts of the Arabian Peninsula for over three hundred years. The modern House of Saud was established in 1932, when Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, a direct descendent of the 18th-century ruler, established the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with himself as absolute monarch. Today, only his descendents are considered part of the "royal" family line and eligible to ascend the throne.
ECONOMY:
* Saudi oil reserves are the largest in the world, and Saudi Arabia is the world's leading oil producer and exporter. This oil-derived wealth allowed the country to provide free health care and education while not collecting any taxes from its people.
FOREIGN RELATIONS:
* Saudi foreign policy objectives are to maintain its security and its paramount position on the Arabian Peninsula, defend general Arab and Islamic interests, promote solidarity among Islamic governments, and maintain cooperative relations with other oil-producing and major oil-consuming countries.
U.S.-SAUDI ARABIAN RELATIONS:
* The United States and Saudi Arabia share a common concern about regional security, oil exports and imports, and sustainable development. Close consultations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have developed on international, economic, and development issues such as the Middle East peace process and shared interests in the Gulf. The continued availability of reliable sources of oil, particularly from Saudi Arabia, remains important to the prosperity of the United States as well as to Europe and Japan. Saudi Arabia is one of the leading sources of imported oil for the United States, providing more than one million barrels/day of oil to the U.S. The U.S. is Saudi Arabia's largest trading partner, and Saudi Arabia is the largest U.S. export market in the Middle East.
The Saudis are one of the U.S. most important Arab allies. They are sponsors of the only comprehensive peace plan for relations between the Arab world and Israel, although peace negotiations are at a standstill. - BBC News
HAJJ pilgrimage Tuesday December 9, 2008 - Stoning of the devil video or stoning of the jamarat (Arabic: ramy al-jamarāt ) is part of the annual Islamic Hajj pilgrimage to the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Muslim pilgrims.
What is stoning the devil : The stoning of the Devil ritual reenacts part of the story of Abraham and his sacrifice of his son. God told Abraham in a dream to slaughter his only son--Ishmael in Muslim belief--as a sacrifice to God. Abraham consulted Ishmael about this, and Ishamel told his father to comply immediately. On his way to sacrifice his son, the Devil appeared three times to Abraham to dissuade him from fulfilling his duty. Abraham stoned the Devil with seven stones each time he appeared to him. This ritual also has a spiritual significance. By stoning the pillars, pilgrims openly declare their enmity to the Devil. This ritual is particularly emotional for many pilgrims. The pillars actually become the Devil for many pilgrims, and people can be heard screaming, "Because of you, I did...".
Pres. Obama arrived in Saudi Arabia on 6.3.09. Interactive map of the 4-day trip to the Middle East and Europe.
Pres. Obama hopes to set a new tone which is designed to isolate extremists in the region and re-establish the understanding the U.S. gained after 9/11 and lost over Iraq, says Paul Reynolds from the BBC News website .
Not long after arriving in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Pres. Obama and King Abdullah went to the Saudi ruler's farm for a welcome reception, to be followed by a meeting between the two leaders. The President leaves late Wednesday for Cairo, Egypt, where he is to address a mostly Muslim audience Thursday (6 a.m. ET).
Images
6.29.10 Pres. Obama and Saudi King agree on the need to press for Mideast Peace .
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz has died. President Barack Obama was among the world leaders paying tribute to Prince Sultan, referring to him as a "valued friend of the United States" and "a strong supporter of the deep and enduring partnership" between the two countries.
The family's close relationship with the United States, however, had its costs. Prince Sultan was key in allowing U.S. troops to launch the 1991 Gulf War on Iraq from Saudi territory. The presence of American troops in the home of the holiest shrines of Islam was a chief reason the terrorist group al-Qaida said it targeted the United States and Saudi Arabia.
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait under Saddam Hussein on August 2, 1990, put the Saudi kingdom and the House of Saud at risk, with Iraqi forces on the Saudi border and Saddam's appeal to pan-Arabism potentially inciting internal dissent. Bin Laden met with King Fahd, and Saudi Defense Minister Sultan, telling them not to depend on non-Muslim assistance from the United States and others, offering to help defend Saudi Arabia with his mujahideen. Bin Laden's offer was rebuffed, and after the Saudi monarchy invited the deployment of U.S. troops in Saudi territory, Bin Laden publicly denounced Saudi Arabia's dependence on the U.S. military.
Bin Laden believed the presence of foreign troops in the "land of the two mosques" (Mecca and Medina) profaned sacred soil. Bin Laden's criticism of the Saudi monarchy led that government to attempt to silence him. Shortly after Saudi Arabia invited U.S. troops into Saudi Arabia, bin Laden turned his attention to attacks on the West .
On November 8, 1990, the FBI raided the New Jersey home of El Sayyid Nosair, an associate of al-Qaeda operative Ali Mohamed, discovering copious evidence of terrorist plots, including plans to blow up New York City skyscrapers. This marked the earliest discovery of al-Qaeda terrorist plans outside of Muslim countries. Nosair was eventually convicted in connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and later admitted guilt for the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York on November 5, 1990. Bin Laden continued to speak publicly against the Saudi government for harboring American troops, for which the Saudis banished him. He went to live in exile in Sudan, in 1992, in a deal brokered by Ali Mohamed.
11.6.11 Millions in Mecca to start the Hajj pilgrimage. Hajj, a five-day pilgrimage, consists of a series of detailed rituals in Mina, Muzdalifa, Arafat and Mecca. Muslims stone satan at Hajj.
Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is the King of Saudi Arabia, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and the head of the House of Saud. He had been Minister of Defence since 2011, and was Governor of Riyadh Province from 1963 to 2011. Salman became king on 23 January 2015 following the death of his half brother, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud , at the age of 90, three weeks after being hospitalized for pneumonia, and was succeeded as king by his half-brother Salman of Saudi Arabia.
9.27.17: Women can now drive , and the things they still cannot do.
The Hejazi region, where the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina are located, is the destination of the Ḥajj pilgrimage, and often deemed to be the cradle of Islam.
Islam is the state religion of Saudi Arabia and its law requires that all citizens be Muslims. Neither Saudi citizens nor guest workers have the right of freedom of religion.
Kuwait
The capital of Kuwait is Kuwait City. It is a sovereign Arab emirate bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south and Iraq to the north and west. Kuwait has the world's fifth largest oil reserves and is the fourth richest country in the world per capita.
The CIA Factbook of Kuwait. And the history, geography, government, and culture.
Oprah Winfrey interviews Zain Al Sabah
Zain Al Sabah
Thirty-year-old Zain Al Sabah was born into Middle Eastern royalty—her great uncle is the Emir, the current ruler, of Kuwait. And Zain created a stir when she announced she wanted to marry a commoner instead of following the old Kuwaiti tradition of marrying your cousin to preserve the family name and wealth. Now Zain lives in a stunning home with her husband's parents, which is common for young married couples here, but she is building her own home, complete with a pool, gym, tennis court and theater.
In this tiny, oil-rich country, wealth is not reserved just for royals. Zain explains Kuwaiti citizens get free education through college, free medical care and they don't pay taxes! When a Kuwaiti couple gets married, the Emir gives them a $12,000 wedding gift! Most native Kuwaitis also enjoy extravagant lifestyles—mansions, servants and lots of shopping. For example, Zain says her friends fly to Paris and Milan just to buy their wedding dresses. "You don't have to worry about your college education, so why not spend that money on your daughter's wedding gown?"
There are freedoms that Kuwaiti women do not enjoy. Though it's considered one of a few democracies in the Middle East, women do not have the right to vote. "There's nothing I can tell you right now that can justify that," Zain says. "It's a basic, civil, human right. We're considered to be a democratic country. Obviously that democracy is kind of lopsided. I don't mind at all taking it one step at a time. Because, you know what? When the women come on the scene, it's going to be amazing."
* Gained it's independence from Britain on July 20, 1961.
* It's a constitutional monarchy, governed by the al-Sabah family.
* Oil was discovered there in the 1930s, and Kuwait proved to have 20% of the world's known oil resources. Since 1946 it has been the world's second-largest oil exporter.
President Obama meets with the Amir of Kuwait on 8/3/09.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Was Lincoln a Racist?
The Great Emancipator was far more complicated than the mythical hero we have come to revere.
BY: HENRY LOUIS GATES JR. Posted: Feb. 12 2009 9:57 AM
I first encountered Abraham Lincoln in Piedmont, W.Va. When I was growing up, his picture was in nearly every black home I can recall, the only white man, other than Jesus himself, to grace black family walls. Lincoln was a hero to us.
One rainy Sunday afternoon in 1960, when I was 10 years old, I picked up a copy of our latest Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, and, thumbing through, stumbled upon Jim Bishop’s The Day Lincoln Was Shot, which had been published in 1955 and immediately became a runaway bestseller. It is an hour-by-hour chronicle of the last day of Lincoln’s life. I couldn’t help crying by the end.
But my engagement with the great leader turned to confusion when I was a senior in high school. I stumbled upon an essay that Lerone Bennett Jr. published in Ebony magazine entitled “Was Abe Lincoln a White Supremacist?” A year later, as an undergraduate at Yale, I read an even more troubling essay that W.E.B. Du Bois had published in The Crisis magazine in May 1922. Du Bois wrote that Lincoln was one huge jumble of contradictions: “he was big enough to be inconsistent—cruel, merciful; peace-loving, a fighter; despising Negroes and letting them fight and vote; protecting slavery and freeing slaves. He was a man—a big, inconsistent, brave man.”
So many hurt and angry readers flooded Du Bois’ mailbox that he wrote a second essay in the next issue of the magazine, in which he defended his position this way: “I love him not because he was perfect but because he was not and yet triumphed. ….”
To prove his point, Du Bois included this quote from a speech Lincoln delivered in 1858 in Charleston, Ill.:
“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
Say what? The Lincoln of 1858 was a very long way from becoming the Great Emancipator!
So which was the real Lincoln, the benevolent countenance hanging on the walls of black people’s homes, the Man Who Freed the Slaves, or this man whom Du Bois was quoting, who seemed to hate black people?
In the collective popular imagination, Abraham Lincoln—Father Abraham, the Great Emancipator—is often represented as an island of pure reason in a sea of mid-19th-century racist madness, a beacon of tolerance blessed with a cosmopolitan sensibility above or beyond race, a man whose attitudes about race and slavery transcended his time and place. These contemporary views of Lincoln, however, are largely naive and have almost always been ahistorical.
When Peter Kunhardt—my co-executive producer in the making of the PBS series “African American Lives”—asked me two years ago to co-produce, write and host a new PBS series on Lincoln, timed to air on the bicentennial of his birth, I realized that making this film would give me, at long last, the chance to ask, “Will the real Abraham Lincoln please stand up?” I also extensively researched and analyzed Lincoln’s writings and speeches for my book, Lincoln on Race and Slavery.
On the eve of the 200th anniversary of his birth, the Lincoln fable is as vital today as ever. For my PBS series, I filmed all over the country, from a Sotheby’s auction where an obscure letter of his sold for $3 million, to the annual convention last summer of the Sons of the Confederacy, where one official told me that Lincoln is the biggest war criminal in the history of the United States, that his face should be chiseled off Mount Rushmore and that he should be tried posthumously for war crimes under the Nuremberg Conventions!
In the black community, despite strident critiques of his attitudes about blacks by historians such as Bennett, Lincoln continues to occupy a place of almost holy reverence, the patron saint of race relations.
But the truth is that until very late in his presidency, Lincoln was deeply conflicted about whether to liberate the slaves, how to liberate the slaves and what to do with them once they had been liberated. Whereas abolition was a central aspect of Lincoln’s moral compass, racial equality was not. In fact, Lincoln wrestled with three distinct but sometimes overlapping discourses related to race: slavery, equality and colonization. Isolating these three—like the three strands of a braid of hair—helps us to understand how conflicted the man was about African Americans and their place in this country.
Interspersed among these three discourses is the manner in which Lincoln seems to have wrestled with his own use of the “N-word.” Lincoln used the word far less than did Stephen Douglas, his Democratic challenger for the U.S. Senate, but he did indeed use it in prominent contexts including debates and public speeches. Even as late as April 1862, James Redpath recorded Lincoln’s saying of President Fabre Nicholas Geffard of Haiti (who had offered to send a white man as his ambassador to the United States), “You can tell the President of Hayti that I shan’t tear my shirt if he sends a nigger here!”
Lincoln despised slavery as an institution, an economic institution that discriminated against white men who couldn’t afford to own slaves and, thus, could not profit from the advantage in the marketplace that slaves provided. At the same time, however, he was deeply ambivalent about the status of black people vis-à-vis white people, having fundamental doubts about their innate intelligence and their capacity to fight nobly with guns against white men in the initial years of the Civil War.
Even as he was writing the Emancipation Proclamation during the summer of 1862, Lincoln was working feverishly to ship all those slaves he was about to free out of the United States. So taken was he with the concept of colonization that he invited five black men to the White House and offered them funding to found a black republic in Panama, for the slaves he was about to free. Earlier, he had advocated that the slaves be freed and shipped to Liberia or Haiti. And just one month before the Emancipation became the law of the land, in his Annual Message to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862, Lincoln proposed a constitutional amendment that would “appropriate money, and otherwise provide, for colonizing free colored persons with their own consent, at any place or places without the United States.”
Two things dramatically changed Lincoln’s attitudes toward black people. First, in the early years, the North was losing the Civil War, and Lincoln quickly realized that the margin of difference between a Southern victory and a Northern victory would be black men. So, despite severe reservations that he had expressed about the courage of black troops (“If we were to arm them, I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the hands of the rebels…”), Lincoln included in the Emancipation Proclamation a provision authorizing black men to fight for the Union.
Three days before he was shot, Lincoln stood on the second floor of the White House and made a speech to a crowd assembled outside celebrating the recent Union victory over the Confederacy. With his troops and Frederick Douglass very much in mind, Lincoln told the cheering crowd, which had demanded that he come to the window to address them, that he had decided to recommend that his 200,000 black troops and “the very intelligent Negroes” be given the right to vote.
Standing in the crowd was John Wilkes Booth. Hearing those words, Booth turned to a man next to him and said, “That means nigger citizenship. Now, by God! I'll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make.” Three days later, during the third act of Our American Cousin, Booth followed through with his promise.
It is important that we hear Lincoln’s words through the echo of the rhetoric of the modern civil rights movement, especially the “I Have a Dream” speech of Martin Luther King Jr. It is easy to forget that when Lincoln made a public address, he was speaking primarily—certainly until his Second Inaugural Address—to all-white or predominantly white audiences, who most certainly were ambivalent about blacks and black rights, if not slavery. When Lincoln talked about wrestling with the better angels of our nature, he knew whereof he spoke: about his audience and, just as important, about himself.
It should not surprise us that Lincoln was no exception to his times; what is exceptional about Abraham Lincoln is that, perhaps because of temperament or because of the shape-shifting contingencies of command during an agonizingly costly war, he wrestled with his often contradictory feelings and ambivalences and vacillations about slavery, race and colonization, and did so quite publicly and often quite eloquently.
So, was Lincoln a racist? He certainly embraced anti-black attitudes and phobias in his early years and throughout his debates with Douglas in the 1858 Senate race (the seat that would become Barack Obama’s), which he lost. By the end of the Civil War, Lincoln was on an upward arc, perhaps heading toward becoming the man he has since been mythologized as being: the Great Emancipator, the man who freed—and loved—the slaves. But his journey was certainly not complete on the day that he died. Abraham Lincoln wrestled with race until the end. And, as Du Bois pointed out, his struggle ultimately made him a more interesting and noble man than the mythical hero we have come to revere.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is editor in chief of The Root. He is co-host of the PBS series Looking for Lincoln, which premieres Feb. 11 (check local listings for time). His book, Lincoln on Race and Slavery, is available now.
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