Thursday, November 19, 2009

TR

"(“I am so angry with that infernal little Cuban republic that I would like to wipe its people off the face of the earth,” Roosevelt wrote in 1906)"...If racism is nothing new, Mr. Bradley’s readers may still be surprised at the xenophobic ugliness of the photos, letters, cartoons, lyrics and political speeches cited here. And if, for instance, American use of waterboarding against turn-of-the-century Filipino prisoners is not unknown (it was the subject of a New Yorker article last year), neither is it common knowledge. Nor, perhaps, are the lyrics to “The Water Cure,” a vintage United States Army marching song: “Shove in the nozzle deep and let him taste of liberty/Shouting the battle cry of freedom.” The toughest parts of this book re-reveal things we should already know."