We know that secret contact with the Iranians has been a hallmark of the West’s foreign policy with Iran for decades, from the covert action in Iran during the Truman years—operations designed to diminish Soviet and Communist influence—to 1953’s fake Tudeh crowds organized by the CIA under Eisenhower. And of course Iran-Contra. More recently, the West has been involved in a covert war with Iran in an attempt to head off an overt one. The Stuxnet computer virus that set back Iran’s nuclear program. The killing of several Iranian nuclear scientists on Iranian soil.
The only certainty we have in the public discourse in regard to any of the world’s hot spots is that we are dealing with smoke and mirrors with every player. Politicians are involved in rhetorical posturing to their bases, but are quite probably of other views behind the electioneering scenes. History will be their eventual judge. Obama’s administration publicly found itself in trouble because of its “spying” on friendly European nations. Most nations, apart from possibly Britain and America, spy on each other (the Brits and Yanks are besties, with Britain telling the Americans almost everything). Europe just has a case of spy envy. After it vociferously denounced the United States for spying on it, what happened to Germany? They were caught consistently spying on Turkey, its NATO ally—and had even by mistake “accidentally” intercepted phone calls between Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Europe wishes that their spying was as advanced as the Americans’, but that doesn’t mean they were surprised by it and didn’t have their own programs. I have an iota of sympathy for the intelligence agencies, I must admit. Their successes are rarely celebrated publicly, but their mistakes are usually exposed to the world to see, and they make many.
I was barred from a certain Fox host’s show, which I used to appear on weekly, after bringing the intelligence element into a debate over Benghazi, right before the 2012 presidential election. The September 11, 2012, attack, in which the American ambassador to Libya ended up losing his life, was the subject of accusations of inaccuracies and cover-ups. I was not prepared to place the blame solely on the president’s administration. I said on air that a key factor in the subsequent confusion of what went into the public domain was that the secret world has always had an uneasy relationship with the press, and especially in the age of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. The CIA had a facility in Benghazi that was undeniably impacting the information flow the media had been receiving and which Congress’s hyper-partisan hearings exposed. I later discovered that the host took exception to my bringing something up that showed him up. Despite the insistence of a member of his team that I was right to do so and should be invited back, I was never booked on his show again. At least Hannity spent years asking me to return for another round.
It is vital that we have a vigorous public discussion about international relations and also intelligence agencies. But we won’t know everything and we should always remember how these are inextricably intertwined. So if someone is being belligerent about foreign policy and you want to shut them down, say this: The best we can hope for is that the secret world is providing our leaders with accurate intelligence—and that they are listening to it.
Now to the Cheat Sheets.
CHEAT SHEET 12—BASIC AMERICAN BEGINNINGS
BACKGROUND BRIEFING
A million (legal) immigrants a year come to this country. This cheat sheet is for them. We’re not usually taught in our home nations why you eat turkey at Thanksgiving. Only if you’re one of *those* Americans who ask us why we don’t partake of the bird do I suggest that this section is compulsory reading for you!
It’s inaccurate and somewhat offensive to call America a young country. People have inhabited every part of the area for at least 12,000 years. Current wisdom suggests that Paleoindians probably came from Eurasia via Siberia, which was still joined with Alaska until around 10,000 years ago, and then headed south. The multiple Native American Indian tribes were and are hugely diverse, speaking many completely different languages.
There is a prevailing theme throughout our examination of history. For centuries Europeans would arrive somewhere and disrupt ways of life to the detriment of those already in residence. Some would argue that Uncle Sam subsequently took up where those predecessors left off.
Christopher Columbus collided with the Bahamas in 1492, kick-starting adventurous Europeans traveling to America to seek their fortunes and/or religious freedom. Well, mostly. Australia wasn’t the only place the Brits shipped convicts to.
However, it’s important not to be too England-centric here. There was an influx of Europeans in general to America. The Spanish were front and center to the whole experience in the sixteenth century. They were the first to the Grand Canyon, and some settled in what is now Texas and California. The French were all over the Rocky Mountains and more. In the early seventeenth century, New York was actually called New Netherland and belonged to the Dutch, although to be fair it was the English Henry Hudson who brought their attention to it by sailing up the river that would later bear his name on September 11, 1609.
A pause as we look at that date.
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NOTEWORTHY NUGGET: THE ROANOKE COLONY, AKA THE LOST COLONY
This tale can get very long and complicated, but basically, Roanoke was the first English settlement in America (in what is now North Carolina), and it vanished. In 1587, explorer John White led 116 settlers there. When he got back in 1590, they’d disappeared. Cue endless conspiracy theories—if someone knows about Roanoke, they will have one, so are likely to be thrilled if you ask for it. You might be less thrilled to hear about it.
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The Dutch lost New York to the Brits by the end of the seventeenth century. The Brits were actually rather late in the day on the whole America thing. The year 1607 saw the start of the first Brit colony to succeed—in Jamestown, Virginia, named after King James I.
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NOTEWORTHY NUGGET: TOBACCO
Native Americans taught the Spanish how to smoke tobacco and they then brought it to Europe.
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Virginia wasn’t good for gold, as hoped, but it was excellent for tobacco. By 1630 a million and a half pounds of the stuff a year was being exported from Jamestown.
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KEY TERMS: THE MAYFLOWER, PILGRIMS, AND THANKSGIVING
• The Mayflower was a merchant ship that set sail from England in 1620 with 102 people on board. Less than a third of them were Protestant Separatists, who called themselves “Saints” and whom we label “Pilgrims.” The other colonists were your typical immigrant/adventurer/speculator sorts. Must have made for an interesting trip.
• They signed the Mayflower Compact on board, the first example of a written constitution in North America. It pledged loyalty to the king but also stated they’d rule themselves based on a majority.
• They were headed to Jamestown. The wind took them to Cape Cod, New England, Massachusetts.
• Only 44 of the Mayflower passengers survived; they were much aided by the Native Americans.
• By the time of the English harvest festival in the following fall of 1621, the Pilgrims had an awful lot to be thankful for. They ate turkey, cornbread—and more. And continued the tradition every year.
• Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday by President Lincoln in 1863.
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America’s expansion toward the west, the American frontier, began. Fast-forward to the 1770s. There were thirteen flourishing British colonies in America, population of about two and a half million. Mercantilism dictated that the Brits wanted more money off the Americans (spot another recurring theme throughout the book: It’s always about the cash). There was a sort of fair-share argument coming from my native land. Mainland English citizens paid higher taxes than Americans. The revenue from the Americans was used to pay for American defense—and the receipts covered only about a third of the cost of maintaining British garrisons in the colonies. The Americans’ argument was that they no longer required Brit mili
tary might against France and Spain. And the whole taxation/representation thing—Americans didn’t get to vote for the British parliament. One of the more considerable commotions came over the Brits’ 1765 Stamp Act. Although it was repealed, the truce in its aftermath was uneasy.
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KEY TERMS: THE BOSTON TEA PARTY AND THE BOSTON MASSACRE
• Patriots (anti-British rule) were in every one of the thirteen colonies, but were especially vocal and plentiful in Boston.
• The Boston Massacre was a small incident that literally began with snowballs and, well, snowballed. Bostonians, annoyed with British attempts to raise revenue, threw snowballs at a few British soldiers in March 1770.
• Although they were supposed not to open fire, the soldiers did. Five colonists were killed, including the former slave Crispus Attucks—the first African-American to die for the revolution.
• The Boston Tea Party came about because of a convoluted British brainwave involving a monopoly to the East India Company (an English company), cheaper tea for colonialists, and tax. On December 16, 1773, a group of annoyed Patriots stormed three ships and chucked 342 chests of tea into Boston harbor. So that’s why Americans drink coffee—it’s all becoming clearer now.
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You could label the American Revolution an antitax movement. Armed conflict between the Patriots (American rebels) and the Loyalists (pro-Brits) kicked off in April 1775. (Side note: the ones who wore Redcoats were members of the British army.) The next summer, Thomas Jefferson penned the colonies’ landmark Declaration of Independence, which was ratified on July 4, 1776. The United States of America was born and the war was full-on, with General George Washington leading the Patriots’ Continental Army. The Patriots had some powerful allies—the French sent men and supplies. Meanwhile the Spanish and Dutch attacked British ships so their supplies couldn’t arrive. Distance was definitely not on the Brits’ side; communication-wise, the situation was a nightmare. Plus the people in my home nation were unconvinced as to why on earth they should be paying all this money to be at war. In fact there were pro-Americans within the British parliament. And then there were all those Enlightenment ideas floating around at the time. The Age of Reason and all that. The Americans had a point with their case for rights, liberty, and independence. We weren’t stupid back in Blighty.
The Brits surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. Independence had basically been won, although officially the fighting ended in 1783. For the first time ever, a European power had been defeated in a colonial war.
The aforementioned George Washington became the first president. Alexander Hamilton made for a dynamic secretary of the treasury and established the Federalist Party (and is now the subject of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton). James Madison and Thomas Jefferson formed what is now labeled the Democratic-Republican Party in opposition. And some very gifted men set about writing the Constitution—see Cheat Sheet 18.
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KEY TERM: THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE
• President Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory off France in 1803, doubling the republic’s holdings.
• Hence all the French influences still in what was the Louisiana Territory. Cajun and Creole food, anyone?
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Americans had one more war with the Brits (aided by Canadian and Native American troops), the War of 1812. Causes included arguments about territory and trade. Note this is the war when Brits set fire to Washington, DC—including the White House.
The Federalists were against the 1812 war, which officially ended in 1815, and with it the Federalist Party. America briefly had a one-party period, the “Era of Good Feelings,” but that didn’t last long. After the 1824 presidential election the Democratic-Republicans split into two parties, and the rest, as they say, is history. The modern-day Democratic Party was formed circa 1828; the Republican Party was established in 1854.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was a concept that of course did not equally immediately extend to slaves or women. It did, however, give both inspiration. The abolitionist movement was sparked in the United States, it being blatantly hypocritical to have inalienable rights … except for those living in human bondage.
There was no modern machinery for cultivation, so in the 1600s there had been indentured servants, white slaves under contract who would have their travel paid for to the colonies, work a certain number of years, and then get their freedom dues. However, this was not the rosy future that many indentured servants envisaged—only 40 percent survived their contracts. If by chance indentured servants managed to outlive their contracts, they were awarded the worst land. This led to a class of poor, furious farmers, so after the 1676 Bacon’s Rebellion, planters preferred African slavery.
Georgia was briefly an exception. Founded by enlightened thinkers in 1733, it was a utopian experiment, which included no slavery. Alas, seventeen years later went the freedom for all who lived on its soil.
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KEY TERMS: MIDDLE PASSAGE, LOOSE PACKING, TIGHT PACKING
• Middle Passage—the transatlantic sea journey of slave ships from West Africa to the West Indies. It took three weeks or more depending on the weather and on average claimed the lives of 50 percent or more of the slaves on the ships.
• Loose Packing—fewer slaves per ship in view that a larger percentage would arrive alive.
• Tight Packing—more slaves, although more died.
This brutal method brought between ten and twenty million Africans to the New World.
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Every colony in America had slaves, even those in the North. But the populations in the North were smaller, and those African-Americans who were free gravitated toward urban centers.
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KEY TERM: MANUMISSION
Manumission meant the voluntary freeing of a slave by the master. Masters did occasionally free their own slaves. Horrifically, these freed slaves were at risk of being kidnapped by slave catchers, who would force them back into slavery. They had no recourse. Owing to the laws concerning slaves, blacks were not allowed to testify against whites. If you’ve not seen 12 Years a Slave, do so.
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Throughout the nineteenth century the abolitionist movement grew. By 1804, all states north of the Mason-Dixon Line had abolished slavery. However, the number of slaves burgeoned. In 1790 there were almost 700,000; by 1860, almost 4 million. In the southern states, slavery was still very much entrenched in the plantation economy way of life.
The trigger to a slavery showdown was a certain President Lincoln.
Revolutions tend to go hand in hand with civil war. America got its between 1861 and 1865. Decades of rumbling frictions between the northern and southern states on matters including slavery, westward expansion, and federal authority came to a head.
After the election of the Republican—and antislavery—President Abraham Lincoln in 1860, seven southern states seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America. Once the Civil War began, four more joined. During the war, 2.4 million Americans fought, around 2.5 percent of the population died, and the South was pretty much decimated. If you feel you’re enough of an expert on the subject and an independent observer has remarked that you have a talent for delicate debate, at this point you could float the idea that on some levels, the South is still recovering. In the likely event you’re not (why would you even be in this Cheat Sheet otherwise?), take away the following: Yankees fought for the Union against the Confederates. Because the Confederates were proslavery, there has been a long-standing debate over whether their flag now stands for heritage or hate. In 2015 the tide decisively turned toward the latter. Also although many foreigners call Americans Yanks, the word actually applies to northern and not southern Americans, so if you’re anything like me you’ve spent years getting it wrong.
President Lincoln and his commanding general Ulysses S. Grant prevailed. So began the Reconstruction Era, which refers to the period
immediately after the Civil War in which the issues of slavery and readmission to the Union of the eleven states that had seceded were addressed.
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KEY TERMS: BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG AND GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
• Battle of Gettysburg. Fought in July 1863 in Pennsylvania, it was one of the bloodiest and most decisive points in the Civil War. The Union side beat the Confederate, finishing the Confederate invasion of the North.
• In November 1863, Lincoln spoke 273 words at the dedication ceremony for the National Cemetery of Gettysburg. He wasn’t even the featured orator for the day, but his Gettysburg Address became one of the most famous speeches in history.
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The Intelligent Conversationalist Page 9