Saturday, August 31, 2013

Western wars against natives

From Daniel:

"From <em>Culture and Imperialism</em> by Edward Said:

<blockquote>The core of French military policy as Bugeaud and his officers articulated it was the razzia, or punitive raid on Algerians' villages, their homes, harvests, women and children. "The Arabs," said Bugeaud, "must be prevented from sowing, from harvesting, and from pasturing their flocks." Lacheraf gives a sampling of the poetic exhilaration recorded time after time by the French officers at their work, their sense that here at last was an opportunity for guerre à outrance beyond all morality or need. General Changarnier, for instance, describes a pleasant distraction vouchsafed his troops in raiding peaceful villages; this type of activity is taught by the scriptures, he says, in which Joshua and other great leaders conducted "de bien terribles razzias," and were blessed by God. Ruin, total destruction, uncompromising brutality are condoned not only because legitimized by God but because, in words echoed and re-echoed from Bugeaud to Salan, "les Arabes ne comprennent que la force brutale [Arabs only understand brute force]."</blockquote>

From <em>Recovering the Sacred</em> by Winona LaDuke, quoting George Washington:

<blockquote>The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more....Our future security will be in their inability to injure us, the distance to which they are driven, and in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement they receive will inspire them.</blockquote>"