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Another variation on the same theme:
“In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.”
- Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy
“Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”
- Albert Einstein
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“Because some people are just plain evil, m’boy! Just plain evil.” Yuk, yuk; yeah, we know. That’s it. It’s Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, all the time.
Try economics.
Sometimes, nothing obviates further elucidation of the already disturbingly apparent like a good infographic. From Foreign Policy magazine, for instance, via this site, is a columnar graph illustrating the daily consumption of oil in the United States and in various other countries of the world, and another graph showing average fill-up prices in various countries:
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99 has birthed another cow, and with good reason.
From Mother Jones’ Washington Dispatch:
Laura Sonnenmark is a focus group regular. “I’ve been asked to talk about orange juice, cell phone service, furniture,” the Fairfax County, Virginia-based children’s book author and Democratic Party volunteer says. But when she was called by a focus group organizer for a prospective assignment earlier this month, she was told the questions this time would be about something “political.”
On November 1, she went to the offices of Martin Focus Groups in Alexandria, Virginia, knowing she would be paid $150 for two hours of her time. After joining a half dozen other women in a conference room, she discovered that she had been called in for what seemed an unusual assignment: to help test-market language that could be used to sell military action against Iran to the American public. “The whole basis of the whole thing was, ‘we’re going to go into Iran and what do we have to do to get you guys to along with it?” says Sonnenmark, 49.
Soon after the leader of the focus group began the discussion, according to Sonnenmark, he directed the conversation toward recent tensions between Iran and the United States. “He was asking questions about [Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad going to speak at Columbia University, how terrible it was that he was able to go to Columbia and was invited,” Sonnenmark says. “And he used lots of catch phrases, like ‘victory’ and ‘failure is not an option.’”
. . .
“Of all the focus groups I’ve ever been to,” Sonnenmark wrote in a subsequent email to a group of fellow volunteers for the 2006 Senate campaign of Jim Webb, “I’ve never seen a moderator who was so persistent in manipulating and leading the participants.” (Webb is lead author of a Senate letter warning President Bush not to attack Iran without congressional approval; see here and here.)) The gist of the event was “anti-Iranian,” says Sonnenmark.
If the group’s organizers were testing the case for military action against Iran—even as a last resort—Sonnenmark believes they could not have been encouraged by the results of this focus group. “I got the general feeling that George Bush didn’t have a shot in hell” of winning public support for an Iran attack, she says. Some members of her group suggested that if Hillary Clinton were elected president she might have more credibility in making such a case. As for the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran, Sonnenmark’s impression was that the group’s members did not believe it was up to them to judge.
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Lebanon’s fractured parliament failed for a fifth time yesterday to elect a president to replace outgoing Emile Lahoud, whose term is now over. As his last presidential act, Lahoud declared a state of emergency and officially handed the reins of government security to the Lebanese military.
Thousands of troops have been deployed across Beirut, according to The Guardian. Foreign ministers from Spain, France, and Italy came to Beirut to attempt to forge an election deal, but were unable to do so. Consequently, presidential elections are to be attempted again next Friday.
The U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora does not accept the legitimacy of Lahoud’s final order, noting that governmental approval is required to declare a state of emergency under the terms of the Lebanese constitution. However, the popular opposition government, led in many respects by Sayyed Nasrallah and Hizbullah, does not consider Siniora’s cabinet a legitimate governing body, particularly after the resignation of five Shi’a members last year. Hizbullah has boycotted ballots, leaving parliament without the quorum required to elect a new president.
The political landscape in Lebanon is complex and volatile, with the country’s citizens caught in a battle of influences. Hizbullah and many Lebanese citizens, including a large number of Lebanese Christians, want a leader who can strike a balance between receptivity to Washington and openness to the governments of regional powers like Syria and Iran; but the U.S. and Israel perennially demand what would effectively amount to a severance of ties with those countries. The disagreements have led to political gridlock and instability. Siniora has threatened to assume presidential powers; but, writes The Independent, Maronite candidate Michel Aoun has warned that any such attempt would be “calmly confronted” by the opposition, as it would amount to an illegitimization of the office.
Israel’s violent campaign of aggression during the summer of 2006 is fresh on the minds of many Lebanese, who, from long and tough experience, consider Israeli hegemony to be perhaps the nation’s most pressing security threat, and are untrusting of U.S. overtures toward “stability.”
Ann of People’s Geography is currently in Lebanon, where she has enjoyed the opportunity to meet with journalists, policymakers, and many Lebanese. Our thoughts are with her, and we look forward to the exciting firsthand news she brings from the country of her people.
(Illustration by Ben Heine)
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According to the BBC, tens of thousands of U.S. citizens participated in anti-war activities today, organized in major cities around the nation in response to a call from the United for Peace and Justice coalition:
Rallies took place in a dozen cities, with the biggest crowds gathering in New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
They were timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of a vote by the US Senate to authorise the Iraq invasion.
Those taking part, who included relatives of servicemen fighting in Iraq, urged the US congress to cut off funding for the war…
…One of the national co-ordinators of the protests, Leslie Kielsen, told Reuters that the “half a trillion” dollars spent on the war was money that could have been used for education, social housing and to feed the hungry.
In New York participants gathered in Union Square, before marching on to Foley Square, which is close to many of the city’s largest courthouses and government offices.
A two minute silence was held to honour those killed in the violence which has blighted Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion.
An estimated 10,000 people joined a march in Chicago and in San Francisco there was an even greater turnout.
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The Associated Press reports that the United States’ singular deal with India— which bypasses international agreements on nuclear proliferation, allowing India to enjoy nuclear power without being a signatory of a non-proliferation agreement and without subjecting itself to IAEA inspections—has attracted the interest of Israel.
Both the U.S. and Israel have heavily criticized the Iranian government’s ambitions to develop peaceful nuclear energy. Pakistan, India, and Israel—all allies of the United States—are known to possess nuclear weapons capability outside of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, with Israel steadfastly refusing to declare its arsenal, to the dismay of many Arab states.
The Israeli government has submitted papers to the 45-nation NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group) requesting “Nuclear Collaboration with non-NPT States.”
“Israel’s proposal demonstrates the danger of making exemptions for individual countries,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
At the recent IAEA conference in Vienna, only the U.S. and Israel voted against a resolution critical of the Jewish state’s refusal to place its nuclear program under international review. Thusfar, the U.S. State Department has hinted opposition to the Israeli proposal, but the decision will ultimately be made by the NSG.
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Today in Washington, US President George W. Bush addressed attendees of an international climate conference independent of UN auspices. He performed as expected, urging the establishment of goals for the reduction of emissions, but refusing to adhere to mandatory statutes as recommended by the United Nations.
President Bush on Friday urged nations to set a goal for curbing emissions tied to global warming, but stopped short of accepting mandatory curbs laid out in an existing U.N. accord . . .
He said each nation should establish for itself what methods it will use to rein in emissions without stunting economic growth.
He also proposed the creation of an international fund to finance research into clean-energy technology, announcing that the U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would coordinate the effort . . .
Europeans say technology is crucial but not a substitute for binding targets on emissions.
“One of the striking features of this meeting is how isolated this administration has become. There is absolutely no support that I can see in the international community that we can drive this effort on the basis of voluntary efforts,” John Ashton, a special representative on climate change for the British foreign secretary, said in an interview. “I don’t think that this meeting by itself moves the ball very much at all. The much more significant meeting this week was at the U.N., where there was a sense of urgency.”
According to The Guardian, Ashton told the U.N. Foundation on Tuesday that “the question on the mind of everybody heading into those meetings will be: Is this talking about talking, or deciding about doing?” His concerns echo those of many European diplomats who say the U.S. needs to take a much more proactive approach to curbing greenhouse emissions, not least since other major industrialized nations such as China and India are unlikely to move absent a strong example from Washington. More from that article:
President George Bush was yesterday criticised by diplomats for attempting to derail a UN initiative on climate change by pressing ahead with his own conference, which starts in Washington today.
One European diplomat described the US meeting as a spoiler for a UN conference planned for Bali in December. Another, who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, claimed that the US conference was merely a way of deflecting pressure from other world leaders who had asked at the G8 summit this year for the US to make concessions on global warming.
They predicted that Mr Bush, who is to address the meeting tomorrow, will stress the need to make technological advances that can help combat climate change but will reject mandatory caps on emissions.
The British government shares the frustration of other European governments with the lack of urgency on the part of the Bush administration. The British assessment of Mr Bush’s conference is reflected in the level of representation - Phil Woolas, a junior environment minister.
Mr Bush invited 15 countries, plus all EU members.
The highest-ranking representative from outside the US is the German environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel. He said yesterday he did not expect the US or other nations attending the conference to budge. “One cannot expect concrete results.”
One of those attending said the conference reflected “political hardball” on the part of the Bush administration, aimed at undermining the UN, for which it holds long-term suspicion. Another said the conference was aimed at domestic politics, with Mr Bush seeking headlines and television coverage implying that he was doing something about climate change while, in fact, doing almost nothing.
Within the U.S., there has been speculation that a secondary motivation for the White House and the Republican Party may be to preemptively curtail suggestions from Democratic Presidential contenders that the Republican Party has been too passive on the issue of climate change. If the feeling of international diplomats is any reliable gauge, Bush showed hospitality but no Texas-sized gumption during the course of the events of yesterday and today.
Environmentalists have long been aware that any meaningful solution to the problem of climate change will not come without an uncomfortable economic price tag, the majority of which will be shouldered by major corporations, but which will also affect employees and consumers.
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The United States is a large and diverse country, and it is as difficult to make reasonable generalities about its people as about its landscapes. There are some awe-inspiring places and spaces to experience, and I believe that people here are, for the most part, what are called good folks—just as, anywhere one goes in the world, there are mostly good folks to be found.
If you’ve never been to America, you should check it out. There are way too many superhighways and supermarkets and superfactories, of course. But I can tell you from experience that having breakfast in New Orleans’ French Quarter and camping on the Oregon seashore are both great things to do, and there are probably plenty of unique, interesting places where you live, too.
Most Americans are as friendly as can be. It’s not Mayberry in springtime everywhere all the time, by any means, but you get what I mean.
There are some Americans, though—a relatively small but increasing number of them—who believe that America is just about the only place on Earth where one can find good things and good folks. They have taken nationalism too far. They mistake warmongering for defensive posturing, confuse marketing desk rhetoric with traditional values, and apparently don’t understand the difference between the worship of symbols and patriotism, between propaganda and news. Perhaps worst of all, they equate freedom with material prosperity and quality of life with creature comfort.
September 11, 2001 was both an ineffably immense tragedy and a green light for these guys to get serious. After September 11, you could ask any question you pleased except for: Why? Why did this happen? Why would anyone want to do this to us? You didn’t have to ask that question, because it had already been answered: You’re American, and they hate your freedoms because they’re violent savages, just like them injuns was.
This crowd is in power now, and they’re enlightening the less privileged as we speak.
To them, those inside the U.S. that disagree with their pomp and bigotry are mentally infirm, treasonous deviants, and outside dissenters are both deviant (since they’re not purebred neo-cons) and subhuman (since they’re not American). They are right about everything not because they are educated and experienced but because they are American—because, by the power of Grey Skull, they are anointed by divinity, in some conceptions. They’re your go-to guys: for the only credible answers to everything from religion, to history, to the diplomatic and economic affairs of other countries, to science and the environment, to whether or not people should be taken off life support regardless of their own wishes, just ask the ultra-nationalist neo-conservative leadership of the United States of America. They’ll take it in stride, no worries.
Let us go, you and I, back in time to February of 2003. Frontline, a program on public broadcast television, aired a piece called “The War Behind Closed Doors.” This was touted as a balls-to-the-wall, nitty-gritty exposé of the “grand strategy” behind Bush’s new foreign policy as America stood at the “brink of war” with Iraq:
As the U.S. stands at the brink of war with Iraq, many are now warning about the potential consequences: the danger of getting bogged down in Baghdad, the prospect of longtime allies leaving America’s side, the possibility of chaos in the Middle East, the threat of renewed terrorism.
But the Bush administration insiders who helped define the “Bush Doctrine,” and who have argued most forcefully for war, are determined to set a course that will remake America’s role in the world. Having served three Republican presidents over the course of two decades, this group of close advisers — among them Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and perhaps most importantly, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz — believe that the removal of Saddam Hussein is the necessary first act of a new era.
In “The War Behind Closed Doors,” FRONTLINE traces the inside story of how those advisers — calling themselves “neo-Reaganites,” “neo-conservatives,” or simply “hawks” — set out to achieve the most dramatic change in American foreign policy in half a century: a grand strategy, formally articulated in the National Security Strategy released last September, that is based on preemption rather than containment and calls for the bold assertion of American power and influence around the world.
Through interviews with key Republican insiders, foreign policy analysts, and longtime White House observers, the report reveals how America got to the brink of war with Iraq — and how a war and its aftermath will put these advisers’ big idea to the test.
“The War Behind Closed Doors” follows a long-running policy battle between two of Washington’s most powerful insiders and the philosophies they represent: Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Powell, who held the top military job at the Pentagon under President George H.W. Bush and other powerful posts at the highest levels of government, is a cautious realist who represents the establishment’s abiding belief in diplomacy and the containment of foreign enemies. Wolfowitz, who built a career as a smart and tough hardliner at the Departments of State and Defense, champions the idea of preemption, striking first to defend America and to project its democratic values.
At the time the Gulf War ended in 1991, Powell was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Wolfowitz was deputy secretary of defense for policy, the third-highest ranking civilian in then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney’s Pentagon. Powell was instrumental in stopping the war short of going to Baghdad and removing Saddam Hussein. Wolfowitz and other hardliners were less than enthusiastic about that decision.
“Paul Wolfowitz believed then that it was a mistake to end the war,” says Richard Perle, chairman of the influential Defense Policy Board and a veteran of the Reagan administration. “They underestimated the way in which Saddam was able to cling to power, and the means he would use to remain in power. That was the mistake.”
Soon after the Gulf War, Wolfowitz supervised the drafting of a set of classified policy guidelines, called a Defense Planning Guidance, for how the U.S. should deal with Saddam Hussein and the rest of the world in the post-Cold War era. Wolfowitz believed containment was an old idea — a relic of the Cold War — and that America should use its overwhelming military might preemptively, and unilaterally, if need be. His draft of these policy guidelines was leaked to the press in 1992.
“Inside the U.S. defense planning establishment, there were people who thought this thing was nuts,” Barton Gellman of The Washington Post tells FRONTLINE. “The first draft said that the United States would be prepared to preempt the use of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons by any other nation, even, the document said, ‘Where our interests are otherwise not engaged.’ … It spoke of punishing or retaliating for that use, but it also said ‘preempt.’ This was the first time.”
“Wolfowitz basically authored a doctrine of American hegemony,” says historian and foreign policy expert John Lewis Gaddis, “a doctrine in which the United States would seek to maintain the position that it came out of the Cold War with, at which there were no obvious or plausible challengers to the United States. That was considered quite shocking in 1992. So shocking, in fact, that the Bush administration, at that time, disavowed it.”
As the first President Bush left office, Wolfowitz’s draft plan went into the bottom drawer, but it would not be forgotten.
“The War Behind Closed Doors” goes on to recount how the Clinton administration struggled to deal with Saddam Hussein’s defiance of U.S. and U.N. containment policies, while hawks in the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party grew increasingly impatient.
With the election of George W. Bush in 2000, however, the hawks saw a new opportunity to implement a stronger, forward-leaning American stance in the world. Yet during the new president’s first year in office, skirmishing between Colin Powell’s State Department and Rumsfeld’s Pentagon — where Wolfowitz is now the second-ranking civilian — left the adminstration’s foreign policy stalled in a kind of internal gridlock.
All that would change on Sept. 11, 2001.
Four days after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, President Bush and his Cabinet held a war council at Camp David. “From the first moments after Sept. 11, there was a group of people, both inside the administration and out, who believed that the war on terrorism should target Iraq — in fact, should target Iraq first,” says Kenneth Pollack, author of The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (2002) and a former member of the National Security Council staff in the Clinton administration.
But Colin Powell and Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, were determined to rein in the hawks. Powell’s argument — that an international coalition could only be assembled for a war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, not an invasion of Iraq — won the day, and Iraq was put on the back burner.
Yet President Bush had made it clear that the U.S. would not stop at pursuing terrorists and bringing them to justice. “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them,” the president told the nation on the evening of Sept. 11.
Four months later, with the Taliban defeated and Al Qaeda largely dispersed, Bush was ready to move on to the next phase of the war on terrorism. In his State of the Union address, he laid the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq, tying Saddam Hussein’s regime to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
“States like these,” Bush declared, “and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil arming to threaten the peace of the world. … The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”
The stage was set. Phase two was underway, and preemption would get its test case. The president had set a course for the U.S. to use its military power not only to topple Saddam Hussein but to promote democracy in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. Wolfowitz and the hawks, by all appearances, had succeeded.
“I wrote a piece in the Post two days after the State of the Union,” recalls William Kristol, editor of the influential neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard, “saying we’ve just been present at a very unusual moment: the creation of a new American foreign policy.”
In the thirteen months since that speech, the Bush administration has moved steadily toward war with Iraq, though Colin Powell was able to convince the president to seek U.N. backing. Whether that approval is won or not, it is clear that this administration intends to alter America’s strategic relationship to the world.
So, let’s take inventory: It was all Colin Powell’s fault for being such a sissy, Paul Wolfowitz was tough and smart, and Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for 9/11 in a Dr. Claw kind of way. No more pushin’ us around with your WMDs and your secret terrorist supersquads, neither of which—if you really had them at all, which we somehow need not conclusively prove—you could possibly have come to possess without our express approval and assistance in the first place—but, hey! That was years ago. It’s the start of a Brand. New. Era. You can just imagine the specter of George Washington smiling down upon its moment of creation, just as he is about to be joined by Jesus Christ, perhaps.
I am sorry that some Americans, academic luminaries, ersatz pundits, and disinterested suburbanites among them, saw the need to make complete asses of themselves and their countrymen and countrywomen during the president of Iran’s recent visit to New York City. Curiously, I get the feeling that most of the worst offenders had, only the day before Ahmadinejad’s speeches (it having been a Sunday, you see), believed in kissing cheeks, loving enemies, universal brotherhood, and altruism to the point of self-immolation if necessary. “Half-truths, canards and lies,” as one friend described the scene, somehow abounded on Monday.
America’s massive occupation of Iraq is being resisted with weapons that may—may—have trickled in from Iran, and Tehran is to blame, even though, when American-built planes drop American-made bombs to churn up the farms, cities, arms, and legs of the Lebanese, Washington whistles absently across the Atlantic. Palestinians resist their colonial overlords with whatever desperate means are available, and Tehran is to blame. Iran wishes to exercise its right to peaceful nuclear energy without having to obtain the permission of the only nation ever to detonate atomic weapons in heavily populated civilian areas, and so Tehran is certainly on the path to a nuclear war against the world. The president of Iran quips outrageously provocative one-liners which are widely mistranslated, and that is inexcusable; the president of the United States sweeps whole nations into an ‘axis of evil’ and warns the international community to back off, and is lauded as a visionary.
Gargantuan military bases are being erected throughout Iraq and on the border with Iran. A great deal of the oil from the Gulf must pass through the Straits of Hormuz. A successful defiance of unilateral imperialism anywhere near Iraq cannot be tolerated by the neo-conservative elite management caste. Just one war could hardly constitute a whole new radiant era of murderous magnanimity, anyway.
We know what to expect, all the same hoping fervently that we must be wrong to expect it. We know who to thank for the policies and propaganda. But we live in a land where free speech is ubiquitous, and enough outcry is to injustice what water was to the Wicked Witch. This time, can there be any excuse for the inaction of concerned citizens?
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Yon telescreen informs me that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has landed in New York City, where he will speak at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly and will participate in a political forum at the city’s esteemed Columbia University.
Like any sensible American with a brain not yet riddled by the neuro-mange of ideologically enforced hypocrisy, I welcome President Ahmadinejad to my country and gladly await what he has to say about . . . whatever he’s going to talk about.
I’m telling you, though—glancing through the U.S. national and even some of the international media, you’d think that Adolf Hitler himself were going to be parading down Fifth.
Richard Bernstein at the International Herald Tribune writes:
“Necessarily, on occasion, this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most, or even all of us will find offensive and even odious,” the university’s president, Lee Bollinger, declared of Ajmadinejad’s impending visit. “We trust our community, including our students, to be fully capable of dealing with these occasions, through the power of dialogue and reason.”
There is of course a difference between a grandiose gesture and a dialogue, so it isn’t inconsistent for the New York police to have said “no” on Ground Zero while Columbia said “yes” to a speech.
Still, the funny thing is that the Columbia invitation may actually play more into Ahmadinejad’s hand than the 9/11 gesture would have.
And this, from the AP:
After Columbia said it would not call off the Monday forum, somel local officials, including City Council speaker Christine Quinn, said the Iranian leader did not belong at an academic institution.
“Anyone who supports terror, pledges to destroy a sovereign nation (Israel), punishes by death anyone who ‘insults’ religion … denies the Holocaust and thumbs his nose at the international community, has no legitimate role to play at a university,” Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said in a statement.
Is Ahmadinejad a nutty guy? I believe so. Has he said some outlandish things and made a career of being resistant to change? Definitely. Do his opinions and actions equivocally represent the majority of his people? Not hardly. Could all of these statements equally apply to our own President? Abso-frickin’-lutely, with a fork in it for good measure.
His request to lay a wreath at the 9/11 memorial has been thunderously booed by Hillary Clinton (running for President, are we?) and denied by the city of New York. You see, Dear Leader has already clearly explained that Ahmadinejad is a Grand Wizard of the Axis of Evil. Therefore, at all costs, we must make his actions fit this preconception—so as a world citizen and a human being, Ahmadinejad will not be allowed to make a gesture of sympathy and respect.
While I recognize that welcoming an authoritarian Muslim leader to the Big Apple with a ticker-tape parade is unrealistic, nonetheless I am appalled at the venomous spittle issuing forth from the glands of the U.S. press. Push the little daisies and make them come up, as the song says.
Praise be to Columbia U. for its bold move to open its doors to dialog and reason. What will Ahmadinejad discuss there and at the U.N.? I have no way of knowing. Here, though, are a few high points I’m hoping he’ll touch:
Just some ideas.
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Stop, Listen–What’s that Sound? Anti-Americanism and "The New McCarthyism"
Posted in Fascism, History, Israel, Nationalism, Politics, USA, foreign policy, human rights, middle east, political commentary with tags Fascism, foreign policy, History, human rights, Israel, middle east, Nationalism, political commentary, Politics, USA on 11/12/07 by CurtisIn an upcoming essay of Project -ism (It’s coming—it’s on its way, I tell you–none knoweth the hour!), I will discuss the systematic absurdities of nationalism in some detail. But an interesting article recently posted at Reclaiming Space, Larry Cohler-Esses’ “The New McCarthyism” from The Nation, got the gears turning prematurely with regards to the phenomenon of “anti-Americanism” and its close associate, what has come to be identified with “anti-Semitism” even though, in reality, it is something else entirely. While, as history clearly evidences, both anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism unfortunately exist in their own right, in contemporary context it seems apparent that, for most common usages, these labels would be more accurately grouped under the heading of “anti-imperialism.” This twisted terminology, when repeatedly amplified through the mouthpieces of the mainstream media, affects a transformation whereby criticism of policy becomes ad hominem criticism, whereby the rational becomes the irrational. It is a most perilous and yet eerily compelling association which plays upon basic social psychology with results entirely deleterious to both personal self-determination and peaceful diplomatic relations worldwide, but equally lucrative for the wealthy and powerful captains of the military-industrial ship of state.
(cartoon by Ted Rall, from Liberty News)
In a thickly sourced article, Wikipedia defines anti-Americanism (courtesy of Random House, incidentally) as being “opposed or hostile to the United States of America, its people, its principles, or its policies.” The article goes on to state that “in practice, a broad range of attitudes and actions critical of or opposed to the United States have been labeled anti-Americanism. Thus, the applicability of the term is often disputed.”
Consider a rough analog in interpersonal relationships. If one feels that one dislikes a person—that is, if one were to characterize one’s self as, absurd as it may sound, anti-John or anti-Paula, etc.—this would perhaps be because the actions of the person in question had caused friction or displeasure of some sort, fostering a general mistrust of his or her character. Perhaps John boxed one’s ears for no apparent reason; perhaps Paula obnoxiously cut one off at a busy intersection. In most cases, and of course dependent on innumerable factors, the object of displeasure might later behave in such a way as to redeem himself or herself in one’s eyes; just because one is anti-John today does not mean necessarily that one must be anti-John tomorrow. We are capable, in most instances, of separating the person from his or her immediate actions to a high degree, by contextualizing those actions against the larger framework of what we know of the person and of personal character in general. This seems self-evident enough, and happens to be a moral cornerstone of many of the world’s religious faiths.
Of course, as human beings, we often harbor grudges that are most irrational in character. All such sentiments of the type we are discussing are in some measure subjective, but subjectivity is not the same as irrationality. One might be anti-John because John earned a promotion for which one had been overlooked; or because John criticized one’s favorite impressionist painter at last night’s dinner party. These types of judgments, one can see, are of a different species than the former.
Therefore, we are (or, at the least, should aspire to be) continually questioning our own evaluations of others. It is not so much a question of being non-judgmental, since this is essentially the same as being non-subjective, which is something that, in the absolute, lies quite beyond the capacity of human cognition. It is principally a question of the proper qualification, justification, and contextualization of judgment, and of, in the appropriate cases, keeping certain judgments to one’s self and under watchful guard.
The same is true of one’s evaluation of the character and behavior of a nation-state. And, thus, we can identify at least two prevalent and diametrically opposed views on anti-Americanism: one which seeks to group any sentiment in opposition to the character and policy of the United States government under the heading of the irrational ad hominem against the “American people,” the “American way of life,” and other such nebulous and chameleonesque conceptualizations; and another which recognizes that some of these sentiments—in all probability, a huge majority of them—are in fact sober and calculated judgments based on specific statements and actions of the U.S. government, judgments in which cultural and situational relativism stand as ubiquitous factors.
As an exhibit of the former, take A.S. Markowitz’s statement in Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (the title of which, alone, goes a long way towards suggesting the sentimental, forcibly dualist character of the argument within):
This, then, is akin to the case of one disliking Paula because of how very comfortably her home is furnished, because of how verdant and velvety her front lawn appears to one’s wayward eye. If only Paula’s life were not so perfect in every discernable detail, one’s own would not seem so dreary. The United States of America, because of its unshakable moral fortitude and alabaster principles, is merely the “scapegoat;” that the United States aided and abetted a host of brutal dictatorships during the same period, that it turned numerous Latin American countries into satellites, and that it later unilaterally invaded and occupied both Afghanistan and Iraq under premises not markedly different (except, perhaps, in their emotional intensity) from the earlier justifications of the Soviet Union in south Asia, seems hardly of consequence.
In a 2002 newspaper interview, Noam Chomsky offered an opposing, and, one grasps, far more realistic and relativistic conception:
Markowitz speaks of anti-Americanism from without, while Chomsky describes it from within—but the underlying rationale (properly, the lack thereof) is the same.
In “The New McCarthyism,” the article mentioned above, the author writes:
The article discusses mounting attempts from certain quarters in academia to discriminate against accomplished academics who have expressed contempt for the policies of the U.S. and Israeli governments in the Middle East. One cannot seriously question the existence and expansion of the State of Israel without being labeled anti-Semitic; one cannot criticize U.S. political hegemony unless one is suffering from a pre-existing illness of anti-Americanism.
The widespread execution of Jews in Europe as a response to the Black Plague was anti-Semitism; the relentless and unspeakably horrible persecution of Jews by Hitler’s Germany was anti-Semitism; an employer’s refusal to hire a qualified Jewish applicant solely on the basis of his faith is anti-Semitism. Cogent, historically informed criticisms of the cruel, remorseless, and anachronistically colonialist policies and actions of the Israeli state do not constitute anti-Semitism.
Similarly, when a group of extremists crashes fully populated airplanes into fully populated U.S. landmarks, that is anti-Americanism; when North Korean propaganda posters exclaim “Death to America,” that is likewise anti-Americanism. But criticism of the actions and root motivations of the U.S. government in its obsequiously obtuse response to such threats does not in any sense equate with this kind of glandular discrimination.
As Seneca observed millennia ago, “Men love their country not because it is great, but because it is their own.” And, to quote G. K. Chesterton’s response to a famous one-liner, “‘My country, right or wrong’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’”
The somber subject matter notwithstanding, the effect of such imagery as this upon the honest, forthright, well-read person is generally a mixture between the macabre and the comical. To those unquestioning, devout souls yoked to the chariot of nationalism, though, the impression given is likely to be altogether different.
Specifically in the case of the United States (but not unlike the situations in Nazi Germany, Axis Japan, or apartheid South Africa), underneath the nationalist rhetoric and fascist imagery lie the illusions that the nation is actually a fully functioning, unassailable bastion of heavenly perfection—that, unlike every other nation in the history of the world, its idealistic principles somehow have not been repeatedly marred by the pragmatic requirements of survival and by gruesome missteps. So, then, to criticize the actions of the government must be to criticize the character of the people, since it is the people that constitute our country’s identity on the world stage. Correct? Hardly.
In the simplest sense, nothing could be further from an accurate representation of reality. The citizens of the United States did not, in my recollection, vote to set up the CIA-sponsored training camps which created the sophisticated “terrorists” of today, people who were “our guys” until they detached themselves from the Washingtonian agenda; nor did we vote to fund the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, nor did we elect to invade and occupy two sovereign nations in response to terrorist acts on our own soil. As a habit, we do not even directly elect our own leadership, nor do we appear sufficiently moved to officially rebuke that leadership when it tramples on our Constitution.
But, for our failure to hold ourselves accountable for the shooting, spending, and spouting-off sprees which have characterized U.S. foreign policy for decades running—and in the “freest country of the world,” no less, with resources at our disposal far outstripping those of many of the world’s other cultures—perhaps, as Americans, we are deserving of “anti-American” sentiment after all. Perhaps dissent really is the highest form of patriotism, a quality in which we may be sorely lacking as a culture.
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