I lived overseas for a couple of years in Italy, and, in general, Italians like Americans, but there were moments where we were yelled at, told to go home, and generally harassed, and this in a country that is our ally!
I’ve finally embraced an honest and truthful outlook on our reputation as Americans and have come to some pretty solid conclusions. Let’s first take a historical perspective.
Prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve, the federal income tax and the decades long move away from a gold standard for the dollar, the government didn’t have an easy means of funding wars. Prior to those events, if the government wanted to conduct a war, it had to raise funding through suspension of the gold standard and printing more money, through war bonds (which was less effective), borrow money from foreign countries, or create new taxes. All of which were unpopular. In the vein of never letting a good crisis go to waste, the administrations in the early 1900′s used the wild market swings and the Great Depression to hustle in these new policies that eventually would let them conduct continual wars against other countries. After WWII we have Korea, Vietnam, problems with the Iran/Contra, Somalia, adventures with the U.N. on “peacekeeping” missions, Iraq I, Afghanistan, Iraq II, Libya, targeted missile strikes in Yemen, and black ops assassinations in Pakistan, among all of the other things our military is doing overseas.
For just a minute, let’s do what Jesus would and put ourselves in the shoes of these other nations. And let’s go backwards from now…
If the government of Yemen sent an unmanned drone and blew up a target, say in Montana, we the people of America would call that an act of war. We would immediately call for a retaliation against Yemen. Denigrating cartoons would be the rage and JibJab would make a new viral video depicting us blowing up Yemen. Politicians would take the stage and appeal to all of our love for country and God to go blow these people up, even if it meant we would lose American lives in the mean time. And we would do it…
Imagine if the government of Pakistan believed there was an enemy of their state inside our borders, one who had done real destruction to their country, but that they didn’t trust us to take care of for them. Instead of telling us what they were doing, in this scenario they send a squad of their military personnel in to Orange County in a helicopter, land it, kill the guy, blow up the helicopter and find another ride out. Then they come out and tell the world they got their man and how they did it. If this happened, we the people would instantly revile Pakistan and they would be our mortal enemies. How dare they take matters in to their own hands?! We wouldn’t stand for it for a minute!
Imagine with me, a militarily superior Iraq with Saddam at the head. Imagine that he starts pushing for invading America because the head of our government (let’s pretend it is Bush II) is an evil dictator who needs to be deposed to make way for peace in the world. How dare America have a nuclear arsenal?! They build more and more sophisticated weapons every year! We need to invade to make the world a safer place! Right? And then Iraq comes over and invades America, and eventually succeeds in taking the eastern sea board, getting rid of our President and government. What would we do? We would take up arms and fight the invasion! Anyone old enough to hold a gun would have one and we would FIGHT!
I could go on. Regardless if Saddam was a bad person (which he was) and should have moved on, regardless if bin Laden was in Pakistan and should have been captured or killed (which he should have been), the end does not justify the means if we do not also want to create more reputation problems in the rest of the world. Our reputation management has been to assert our dominance, to assert our exceptionalism, and increase the American empire. We have over 300 military bases in 170 countries. Tell me that isn’t an empire. Tell me that our military presence in the world isn’t meant to ONLY protect our financial interests world wide. No wonder people all over the world want to kill us. It’s easy to find other people to recruit to your cause when you have an easy target like the American empire. I’m not offering a critique of foreign policy except to say no wonder we are hated. If any other country did to us what we have done and do to them, we’d hate them too. Maybe it’s time to close those bases and bring our military back home. Maybe it’s time to return to a nation of peace where we let other countries sort out their own messes while we sort out our own. Or maybe we should take a lesson from the Brits for once and let go of American imperialism before the empire burns.


