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Volume 27, Issue 7, September 23, 2004

Opinion

The Convoy of Conquest must not go on

by Zoë Williams
The Metropolitan

In 1492, a sadistic, power-hungry man landed three ships in the Americas looking for economic gain.

This man quickly realized the nation he landed on was full of indigenous people living in self-sufficient communities functioning better than any of his megalomaniacal European countries.

In 2003, a careless corporate puppet planned hurling thousands of bombs and troops in Iraq seeking profit for his homeboys and an imperialistic gold star.

The beady-eyed oil zombie had family ties to Iraq and was leading a nation with a long history of Middle Eastern exploitation. His father installed the dictator of Iraq; his political counterparts had poured explosives over them before.

If you have not caught on yet, these are the stories of Christopher Columbus and George W. Bush (plus administration and big money puppeteers). Though these fellows are not related, conquest ran strong in both their veins.

Columbus enslaved thousands, demanding natural resources like cotton and gold. When the masses could not provide, he brutalized them. Columbus led the slaughter of some 115 million natives (a conservative estimate) in the name of spreading Christianity and Western beliefs to the Americas.

On March 19, 2003, Bush gave Baghdad a torrential downpour of high-tech bombs, complimented with the thunder of some 120,000 soldiers storming through Iraq. He inspired a wave of violence as reckless bombs left thousands of innocents dead in the streets.

If natives did not comply with Columbus' demands their hands would be hacked off, leaving them to die. Nursing mothers are said to have had their breasts cut off, infant attached, killing woman and child. All of this was done in the name of "modernity" and the spread of "civilization".

Those not abiding to Bush's reign of terror were shoved into prisons, stripped naked, mocked, sodomized, and electrocuted.

Prisoners were raped and degraded. If I remember correctly, this was all in the name of liberation.

Empires filled with colonial wet dreams cannot spread peace and democracy. It did not work in 1492; it does not work now.

To celebrate Columbus Day as a moment of cultural pride is to ignore history and support the oppression of the indigenous peoples of the Americas carried out to this very day.

There is no holiday in Columbus Day. There is only a river of blood spanning from the 1400s to the modern day for the historically ignorant and jingoistic U.S. warriors to dance in.

Denver hosts a Columbus Day Convoy of Conquest every year. Each time this event goes on without condemnation is a passive thumbs- up for slaughter and conquest in our skewed concept of liberation.