How the Bush Administration is Destroying America's Stature in the World
To put is succinctly, by throwing us off the moral high ground like a bunch of kids sledding down a wintry hillside. Instead of being a source of inspiration for human rights advocates around the world, the United States now finds itself the excuse for torture and mistreatment by the World's unsavory leaders. How lowly we have become. I can only hope that November, and Novembers to come, will provide us with hope for our future. We must strive, and succeed, in removing the tarnish to our status as a beacon of liberty, democracy, and human rights in this new century. Otherwise, the sacrifices of the Greatest Generation, the Founding Generation, and others who proved the worth of this Great Experiment will have been in vain.
posted by Pete @ 10/24/2006 05:06:00 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Well said, Pete.
However, I would respond that the United States has never been the moral exemplar that it has believed itself to be, or that you imply it to be recently (pre-Bush).
In matters of national security let's not forget propping up the Contras, supporting death sqauds in Honduras, Columbia, Paraguay, El Salvador, funding and arming Saddam Hussein vs. Iran, arming and training the mujahedeen (who became the Taliban and al-Qaeda) in Afghanistan vs. USSR, etc.)
And what about treatment of our own civilian population? How do we explain the Trail of Tears for Native Americans (specifically Cherokees), our complicity with and participation in systematic slavery and later, in systematized racism towards descendants of freed slaves, internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, unfair and unreasonable drug interdiction efforts in minority communities, etc.)
It's not exactly a stellar record, is it?
True, although most of the open, systematic failures you mention (slavery, Indian extermination, etc.) occurred BEFORE we had the World stage. Not to excuse them, but we weren't the leader of anything at that point.
In the modern era, the US has at least maintained the attempt to be a moral/democratic beacon despite covert failures to live up to that ideal (Latin America policy of the Kissinger era, Iran/Iraq, Iran-Contra, etc.). Of course, segregation is a glaring exception that the Iron Curtain countries consistently called us on. But we worked hard and cleared that institutional problem up, too.
Of course, the covert nature of our recent moral failures does not relieve us of our responsibility. But at least the World could point to us and say "Well, they're not perfect but they're trying, and what their trying to be is what we should try to be."
The Bush Administration has taken us to a place where the World does not even believe we HAVE moral/democratic ideals to look up to and strive for anymore. They've turned ideals to be imperfectly striven for into mere rhetoric. Now our failures are not failures, they're just self-interested acts. Our goal is not freedom and democracy for all, but American primacy and security. And this turn allows the demogogues and dictators around the world to say "See, we told you so, they're just doing what I'm doing. The mask is off."
Perhaps its just a matter of symantics, but I believe this transformation has not only hurt the American soul, but, to use a painfully abused assertion, made us less safe. What the Bush Administration fails to see is that our stature was not built on military might alone, but on moral leadership too. Might and right. We had less military capacity to dominate the globe 20, 30, 40, or 50 years ago and yet more peoples and countries are giving us the finger now than ever before.
We can't just live by the sword, no matter how "easy" a solution that might appear to shallow thinkers and neo-"tough guys". America is a leader, not a bully. We're the good guys, and should damn well start acting like it.
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