Defining America Down
Many years from now, when historians look back on this period in our history, I fear that they will describe it as the moment when the idea of America lost its resonance in the world, when America became just another country.
I've traveled enough to know that America has long occupied a unique place in the collective consciousness of people across the globe. The idea of America has long encompassed a number of adjectives: some complimentary, some derogatory, but all distinctive and uniquely American. America is viewed as a nation of unparalleled decadence, of conspicuous and unapologetic consumption. But it is also viewed as the land of opportunity, a place where innovation and industriousness are rewarded like nowhere else. People around the world have long complained of American arrogance and self-importance, but on some level, they understand why Americans are proud of their country. They grudgingly admit that America has, for most of its history, been a powerful force for good in the world.
Americans' sincere and earnest belief in their founding principles, in freedom of speech and religion, the rule of law and constitutional democracy, have popularized those concepts throughout the world. America's continued success and vitality have proven not only that a government based on such principles can survive, but that it can flourish. The power of the American dream is ultimately what doomed communism.
America has long been a country dedicated to leading by example. It has been a country that tries to hold itself to its own high standards, regardless of how its enemies behave. That's why there have been countless documented examples over the years of enemy soldiers seeking out American troops in order to surrender, knowing that Americans would not mistreat them. That's the idea of America boiled down to its essence. It's a belief that America, for all its arrogance and annoying self-righteousness, is a country that stands for something important. It's a country that very much believes in its own principles and endeavors heroically to live up to them. That kind of reputation did not develop overnight; it was earned, slowly and painstakingly, by the deeds and actions of countless Americans over many decades.
And it's exactly that reputation that the Bush administration has carelessly pissed away over the last four years. Confronted by a particularly brutal and unprincipled enemy, our leaders decided that our principles were the problem. They were just too confining. So almost immediately, the Administration began defining American down. Torture was essentially defined out of existence. Novel legal theories were introduced justifying the circumvention of long-standing prohibitions. International treaty obligations and rules of war were disregarded. The rule of law itself was up-ended--in secret, by executive decree. Many of the most celebrated American principles were hastily cast aside. Just yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Pentagon has decided to omit the prohibition on "humiliating and degrading treatment" from the Army Field Manual on interrogation. Just add it to the list.
This defining down of American principles has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the world. They see a country famous for its embrace of freedom and individual rights spying upon its own citizens without warrants and locking away its own citizens without due process of law. They see a country famous for its humane treatment of captives building secret torture prisons, engaging in widespread abuse and humiliation of detainees, and using an off-shore prison at Guantanamo Bay as a way of circumventing its own laws and constitutional principles. And worst of all, they see a country that appears to have no more interest in leading by example, a country more concerned with getting itself out of prior commitments and finding ways to exempt itself from the rules. A reputation that took the better part of a century to earn may soon be little more than a memory.
If America ceases to hold itself to a higher standard than the rest of the world, it will lose any legitimate claim to exceptionalism. If America ceases to value and abide by the very principles that it introduced and popularized to the rest of the world, it will no longer capture the imaginations or influence the thinking of people outside of its borders. America will become just another country, remarkable only for its size and strength. It's time to stop defining American down.
UPDATE: Having now reread my post in a less sleep-deprived state, there are some points I'd like to clarify. First, the idea of America that I'm talking about didn't really emerge until the 20th century. I'm talking about the period in our history from roughly World War I onward. Second, I don't mean to suggest that during that period America and Americans did nothing but good. Far from. But I think America did enough good and was true enough to its guiding principles that it became associated with certain ideals. What's troubling about the last four years is not so much that we've not lived up to those ideals; we've often failed in that regard. What's troubling is that in many respects we've disavowed those ideals, openly repudiating them in the name in expediency. It's one thing for the world to see Americans failing to live up to their own professed standards (e.g. by mistreating prisoners of war). That's damaging, but not unprecedented. It's quite another thing, however, for the world to see America, as a matter of policy, defining its standards down. That's what has been happening under the Bush administration, and I find it deeply troubling.
I've traveled enough to know that America has long occupied a unique place in the collective consciousness of people across the globe. The idea of America has long encompassed a number of adjectives: some complimentary, some derogatory, but all distinctive and uniquely American. America is viewed as a nation of unparalleled decadence, of conspicuous and unapologetic consumption. But it is also viewed as the land of opportunity, a place where innovation and industriousness are rewarded like nowhere else. People around the world have long complained of American arrogance and self-importance, but on some level, they understand why Americans are proud of their country. They grudgingly admit that America has, for most of its history, been a powerful force for good in the world.
Americans' sincere and earnest belief in their founding principles, in freedom of speech and religion, the rule of law and constitutional democracy, have popularized those concepts throughout the world. America's continued success and vitality have proven not only that a government based on such principles can survive, but that it can flourish. The power of the American dream is ultimately what doomed communism.
America has long been a country dedicated to leading by example. It has been a country that tries to hold itself to its own high standards, regardless of how its enemies behave. That's why there have been countless documented examples over the years of enemy soldiers seeking out American troops in order to surrender, knowing that Americans would not mistreat them. That's the idea of America boiled down to its essence. It's a belief that America, for all its arrogance and annoying self-righteousness, is a country that stands for something important. It's a country that very much believes in its own principles and endeavors heroically to live up to them. That kind of reputation did not develop overnight; it was earned, slowly and painstakingly, by the deeds and actions of countless Americans over many decades.
And it's exactly that reputation that the Bush administration has carelessly pissed away over the last four years. Confronted by a particularly brutal and unprincipled enemy, our leaders decided that our principles were the problem. They were just too confining. So almost immediately, the Administration began defining American down. Torture was essentially defined out of existence. Novel legal theories were introduced justifying the circumvention of long-standing prohibitions. International treaty obligations and rules of war were disregarded. The rule of law itself was up-ended--in secret, by executive decree. Many of the most celebrated American principles were hastily cast aside. Just yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Pentagon has decided to omit the prohibition on "humiliating and degrading treatment" from the Army Field Manual on interrogation. Just add it to the list.
This defining down of American principles has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the world. They see a country famous for its embrace of freedom and individual rights spying upon its own citizens without warrants and locking away its own citizens without due process of law. They see a country famous for its humane treatment of captives building secret torture prisons, engaging in widespread abuse and humiliation of detainees, and using an off-shore prison at Guantanamo Bay as a way of circumventing its own laws and constitutional principles. And worst of all, they see a country that appears to have no more interest in leading by example, a country more concerned with getting itself out of prior commitments and finding ways to exempt itself from the rules. A reputation that took the better part of a century to earn may soon be little more than a memory.
If America ceases to hold itself to a higher standard than the rest of the world, it will lose any legitimate claim to exceptionalism. If America ceases to value and abide by the very principles that it introduced and popularized to the rest of the world, it will no longer capture the imaginations or influence the thinking of people outside of its borders. America will become just another country, remarkable only for its size and strength. It's time to stop defining American down.
UPDATE: Having now reread my post in a less sleep-deprived state, there are some points I'd like to clarify. First, the idea of America that I'm talking about didn't really emerge until the 20th century. I'm talking about the period in our history from roughly World War I onward. Second, I don't mean to suggest that during that period America and Americans did nothing but good. Far from. But I think America did enough good and was true enough to its guiding principles that it became associated with certain ideals. What's troubling about the last four years is not so much that we've not lived up to those ideals; we've often failed in that regard. What's troubling is that in many respects we've disavowed those ideals, openly repudiating them in the name in expediency. It's one thing for the world to see Americans failing to live up to their own professed standards (e.g. by mistreating prisoners of war). That's damaging, but not unprecedented. It's quite another thing, however, for the world to see America, as a matter of policy, defining its standards down. That's what has been happening under the Bush administration, and I find it deeply troubling.
5 Comments:
I wonder just how much of this is a belief in the myth that the U.S. has made of itself over that same century you speak of. What the Bush administration is doing now, largely through an enhanced belief in secrecy is not much different than other administrations have done in secret, as well. The big difference seems to be that this administration continues to deny, nay, ignore, evidence of wrongdoing.
Here's a money quote from Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow:
"The scandal over torture and murder in the Philippines, for example, might have led Americans to rethink their country's worldwide ambitions, but it did not. Instead, they came to accept the idea that their soldiers might have to commit atrocities in order to subdue insurgents and win wars. Loud protests followed revelations of the abuses Americans had committed in the Philippines but, in the end, those protests faded away. They were drowned out by voices insisting that any abuses must have been aberrations and that to dwell on them would show weakness and a lack of patriotism.
"American presidents justified these first "regime change" operations by insisting that they wanted only to liberate oppressed peoples, but in fact all these interventions were carried out mainly for economic reasons."
We've always done these things, and worse. But we've wrapped ourselves in the flag and a very selective reading of our own history and marched merrily on. We have literally destroyed the political lives and economies of countless countries simply because an American corporation thought it was being cut out of its god-given right to outrageous profit.
I don't think we've ever actually been (in the last hundred or so years), at the national and international level, what the country's citizens think of themselves as individuals. And when we ask ourselves, "why do they hate us?," the answer to that is not solely due to recent events. The reasons are of much longer standing than just the actions of the Bush administration. At the administrative level of the nation, we've never been concerned about either democracy or freedom, except in the ways that those concepts might improve the profits of U.S. corporations.
Sorry to seem so dour about this assertion of yours, but I think what we're actually seeing these days is the cumulative effect of many decades of imperial behavior. What has simply made it seem much worse of late is that even friends and allies (whom we have supported in the past and have not treated badly) have come to see the "in-your-face" tactics of the Bushies as bad form and antithetical to their own interests. If truth be known, we have very few real friends in places like Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, the Philippines, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Honduras, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos--or, more recently, Afghanistan and Iraq.
We've supported some of the worst dictators and monarchs in modern history if there was a buck to be made by doing so. It's simply hypocritical to say that we are a bulwark of freedom and democracy when we've aided ruthless leaders like the Shah of Iran in the shattering of the democratic movement in that country. We did so for profit alone, all the while using an all-purpose ideology as moral cover.
We have as many enemies as we do today because we made those enemies ourselves. The Bushies have simply turned that typical U.S. behavior into an art form.
Bingo!
The historical legacy of the Bush Administration will be the tyranny
of his inestimably low expectations,
as well as the wake of his repudiation
of democratic ideals which his enablers see as a small sacrifice in the quest for survival, as they see survival.
I think you're on the right track, but I also think you stopped short.
I believe the Chimperor will be remembered as the head of the regime that caused the splitup of the United States of America, and I suspect that we are less than ten years from that split.
A.L.,
This is one of the best posts I've seen in a long time (particularly once the update was added). That's not to say I don't agree with some of Paul Rosenberg's criticism, but I was very moved by what you wrote.
Keep up the good work, and thank you.
montag is correct to suggest that the US has been behaving like every other colonial power since at least the invasion and conquest of the Philippines over 100 years ago. But one wouldn't know this if all one knew was what one learned in the public schools and read in the media. This is what I would call the "Sunday school" or "July 4th" version of American history, namely that it is a country which has been chosen by God to lead the world to the promised land of liberty, that it has been nothing but a force for "good" in the world since its creation, etc, etc.
However, I would suggest that montag push his historical analyis a bit further back in time.
What about slavery? (the Brits got rid of it in at home in the 1770s and in their colonies in the 1830s without a war, and the French in 1848 during yet another revolution; there are some historians who argue tht one reason for the American Revolution is that southern slave owners thought the British government would "interfere" in their affairs by applying anti-slavery legal opinion in the colonies - so a revolution for "liberty" in order to protect the institution of slavery!; later on where were the runaway slaves running to but a freer country namely Canada).
What about the dispossession and slaughter of the Native Americans which intensified after the end of the Civil War and continued up to the closing of the frontier? I though property rights were meant to have been enshrined in the Constitution.
What about the systematic disenfranchisment and discrimination against Blacks from the end of the Civil War up to the civil rights movement of the 1960s (South African Apartheid by any other name).
What about the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the fire bombing of cities by the Brits and the US in WW2?
What about the killing of between 2 and 3 millilion (yes, million) civilians by the US in Indochina during the 1960s and 1970s?
What about the fact that the majority of brutal dictatorships since the end of WW2 have been either put into power, propped up in power, or sold weapons to, or protected by vetos in the UN by the US? (all iin name of a "crusade" against communism and now against "terrorism")
And now, what about the killing of nearly 3/5 million Iraqis in Gulf War 1 and its aftermath? (500,000 dead civilians, mostly children as a result of the economic blocade; 100,000 more civilians in the first 18 months of the current Iraq war; and probably another 100,000 since)
They may well be some positive apsects to American history for some economic, ethnic and religious groups but one would have to agree that there have also been some serious negatives which usually get swept under the carpet by "patriots" who uncritically accept the "Sunday school" and "July 4th" interpretations of American history.
It makes one wonder what kind of God Americans claim to worship. We know that George W. believes he was chosen by his God to be President at this time and to lead America in a new crusade. In many religions there is a prohibtion against the "killing of innocents". Apparently not in George W's religion or those who voted for him or who continue to support him.
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