Perhaps the most dangerous threat today to U.S. democracy, as well as to world peace and the continued existence and progress of world civilization, is the war making capabilities and attitudes towards war of the United States of America. Therefore, it is crucially important that we Americans understand why our country has such an affinity for war.
I don’t believe that it’s because we are taught explicitly from an early age that war is the best way to solve problems. But what we
are taught – thoroughly – is that our country is always good and virtuous,
especially in its decisions regarding war. Yes, our leaders may make
mistakes, or miscalculations, but they are NEVER ill intentioned – nor are our soldiers who fight in our wars. That is such a solidly ingrained point of wisdom in our nation that it is absolutely taboo for a U.S. politician to imply otherwise.
The terrible consequence of this philosophy of “American exceptionalism” is that it is almost impossible for our nation to resist being pulled into wars when our leaders, especially our President, wish to lead us into war. This is not at all how our Founding Fathers envisioned our nation becoming, and in fact they went to great lengths to ensure that a single person could NOT lead us into war, by giving Congress the sole power to declare war.
James Madison said that “No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare”, and therefore “To chain the dogs of war, the Constitution has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war to the Legislature.”
Although it is taboo for American
politicians to question the concept of American exceptionalism, many American authors have done so in starkly honest terms. For example, Stephen Kinzer explains in “
Overthrow – America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq”, that:
America overthrew governments only when economic interests coincided with ideological ones… The American ideology was that of Christian improvement and “manifest destiny.” Decades later… it was anti-Communism. During both eras, Americans came to believe it was their right, and even their historical obligation, to lead the forces of good against those of iniquity…
All believed that the twin goals of United States foreign policy should be to secure strategic advantage, for both political and commercial reasons, and to impose, promote, or encourage an ideology. The regimes they marked for death were those they considered both economically and ideologically hostile.
Directors of large corporations were the first to wish Mohammed Mossadegh (
Iran), Jacobo Arbenz (
Guatemala), and Salvador Allende (
Chile) overthrown. They persuaded leaders in Washington… to depose them… In all four countries they led to increased repression and reduced freedom. Beyond their borders they also had profound effects. They intensified and prolonged the Cold War… they led millions of people to conclude that the United States was a hypocritical nation, as cynical as any other, that acted brutally to replace incipient democracy with cruel dictatorships.
I have one disagreement with Kinzer on this issue. I don’t consider our commercial reasons for pursuing war (otherwise known as “war profiteering”) and our ideological reasons to be “twin goals”. Rather I consider them to be largely the same goal. It is a known facet of human psychology that humans invent rationalizations to excuse their actions and lessen their guilt. Just as individual humans invent rationalizations to excuse their actions, nations invent ideologies to excuse their actions. The ideologies are not separate from the commercial motivations that lead us into war – they are an integral part of them. Perhaps Kinzer knows that, but was unwilling to stick his neck out even further than he already had.
In a similar vein, James L. Loewen, in “
Lies Across America – What our Historic Sites Get Wrong”, talks about how our museums sanitize war, and the toxic consequences of that sanitization:
Why don’t museums raise serious issues about World War II today? To facilitate the next war? In this sense their staffs still seem concerned with maintaining civilian morale… Whatever the reason, something is wrong when visitors come out of the Museum on the Pacific War less able to think about the breakdown of civilized rules in modern warfare than when they went in.
The manifestations of American exceptionalism in American politicsSubjects which are almost absolutely taboo in our country are those which cast doubt on the myths that our elites try to pound into us from the time we’re old enough to read. That is, anything that tends to expose the gaps between our ideals and the reality of our actions. And chief among those ideals are our commitment to freedom and democracy and the inherent virtuosity of American leaders. Thus it is ok to talk about “irregularities” in our elections or “vulnerabilities”, but talk of a stolen Presidential election
is taboo. And thus it is taboo to question the intentions of our leaders. Even the strongest criticisms of George W. Bush by his political adversaries are almost always accompanied by statements to the effect that he is wrong, but nevertheless has good intentions.
It is important to note that these taboos are created and sustained much more by our leaders – our corporate news media and our political and commercial elites – than by ordinary Americans. But ordinary Americans are greatly influenced by these elites, and our elites know that.
That is why Richard Durbin was castigated mercilessly for his
stating the truth of how our treatment of prisoners of our “War on Terror” fail utterly to conform to American ideals; that is why Rosie McDonnell was castigated for
posing a rhetorical question that suggests that our country might be perceived as a terrorist country to other nations of the world; that is why Cynthia McKinney was castigated
for suggesting that not only the Bush administration’s actions regarding its failure to prevent the 9-11 attacks, but its motives as well, should be considered and investigated; and that is why
Jane Fonda and
John Kerry were castigated for questioning the
moral basis of our Vietnam War; and that is why Michael Moore is castigated for almost anything he says.
And thus the violent reaction against so-called “kooky conspiracy theorists” by our elite. Yet, it is not kooky conspiracy theories per se that our elites object to. Rather, it is only those conspiracy theories that cast doubt on the myths that they consider to be sacred. As I noted a few months ago in
another post:
We know for a fact that there are many powerful people in our country, including many who currently run our government, who are neither honest nor well intentioned. We have very good reason to believe that some of them would be willing to do very bad things in order to increase their power and their wealth. History is full of such examples, some which I mentioned above. Furthermore, we also have reason to believe that our corporate news media is likely to withhold from us evidence of these kinds of things. After all, much of our corporate news media had evidence of Bush administration lies in leading us into our war in Iraq, and yet they failed to report on those lies for a very long time.
The consequences of our failure to look reality in the face are not benign. One major consequence is that Americans do not question the motives of their leaders who try to lead them into war. Too many Americans believe that it would be “unpatriotic” to do so. Consequently, Congress itself has a
long history of failure in limiting the power of our President to lead us into disastrous wars and keep us there.
The betrayal of American ideals and the betrayal of our American troopsTragically, the extreme form of American exceptionalism promoted by today’s Republican Party has also led to the betrayal of our most sacred values. If an individual or a nation cannot acknowledge its worst faults then it has little chance of correcting those faults.
Perhaps today’s most extreme example of that is our Iraq War. Though most Democrats today say that the war was a “mistake” and that we should end it, they can’t quite bring themselves to take the measures necessary to pose the greatest chance of doing that.
What really needs to be discussed is not just that the Iraq War is a mistake, but that it is a betrayal of our most basic values, as proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence. If we believe that all people have unalienable right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, then why have we pursued a war for questionable motives that has
killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, and why has our administration totally
failed to provide for the reconstruction of their country, as promised? Most important of all, why is the fact that the
Iraqis themselves want us out of their country rarely if ever considered in discussions of whether we should stay or leave? Yes, this is a betrayal of our most basic values – and as such it is a great betrayal of our troops who are sacrificing their lives, supposedly to defend those values.
Abraham Lincoln, widely and rightly acclaimed as our greatest President, had it right in his
Gettysburg Address, one of the greatest speeches ever given, which he used to justify our Civil War. In the first sentence of that speech Lincoln made reference to the greatest American value proclaimed in our Declaration – that “all men are created equal”. And in the last sentence he notes the importance that our dead American soldiers should not have died in vain. But unlike today’s Republican Party, who use this same issue (that our soldiers should not have died in vain) to excuse the continuation of a disastrous imperialistic war, Lincoln actually provided a valid justification for his war, based on the most sacred of American values: “That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” And Lincoln made those words into reality by setting in motion a train of events that would give to a people previously considered to be nothing more than other peoples’ property the opportunity to avail themselves of the unalienable rights proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence.
George Bush’s Iraq War does much the opposite of that. It was conceived by a pack of lies; our politicians continuously complain that the Iraqis are “not doing their part”, as if they are our slaves and are therefore morally required to do our bidding; and we pay little or no attention to the fact that the Iraqis want us to leave their country. Consequently, the war itself constitutes the ultimate betrayal of our troops, many who believe they are putting their lives on the line to defend American ideals, when in fact they are fighting to destroy American ideals.
Why I intend to vote for KucinichDennis Kucinich recently did the unthinkable. He went beyond accusations of Bush’s war being a mistake, to expose the real motivations for the war. Of course, it should have been obvious from almost the beginning that Bush’s motivations for war in Iraq were not at all in accordance with professed American ideals. His claims of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein connections with al Qaeda
never had any basis in actual evidence; almost immediately after our invasion of Iraq we moved to
protect the oil supply while allowing everything else to go to hell; Bush provided no-bid contracts to his cronies, with little oversight, while billions of dollars
went missing; and the Baker-Hamilton
Iraq Study Group report provides numerous recommendations (or maybe ‘demands’ is a better word) on how the Iraqis should handle their oil.
But Kucinich actually
says it out loud: The Iraq War was not a “mistake”; the
primary motive of the Bush administration for invading Iraq was to provide a cheap source of oil for American oil companies; we are currently trying to force an agreement with Iraq to gain their consent for our “theft” of Iraqi oil; Kucinich calls Bush’s invasion of Iraq what it was – a war crime; and he points out the obvious: How can our current imperialistic stance towards Iraq possibly lead to stabilization of that country or the surrounding area – as we are currently claiming as our primary reason for staying there?
All this needs to be said – repeatedly. Though it is true that most Americans are against the Iraq War, they are largely against it because it has not been and is not likely to be “successful”. Hence their ambivalence about the need to withdraw on terms that their current President claims will lead to disastrous results.
Though I have known for a long time that Dennis Kucinich represents my values more consistently than any of the other Democratic candidates, I have nevertheless been reluctant to vote for him in the primaries because I don’t feel that he stands a chance of winning.
I still don’t believe that he stands much of a chance of winning. But his courageous statements about the Bush administration’s betrayal of the most basic American values, as well as his push to impeach Dick Cheney, were the last straw. It is crucially important that his message be heard. If raising his vote share up to 15% – or 10% – or even 5% – means that more Americans will hear his message, then that needs to be done.
Furthermore, maybe we shouldn’t buy into the message that he is not a viable candidate. Perhaps that is just one more perception manufactured by our corporate news media. Buying into that message can create a vicious cycle of lowered expectations. If everyone believes that his candidacy is not viable, then they will refuse to support his candidacy, thereby creating and sustaining a self-fulfilling prophecy. Has anyone ever seen a poll pitting Kucinich against a Republican candidate?
I believe that we have many good Democratic candidates for President in 2008. But at this time I believe that it is vitally important to the peace and stability of the world that Americans learn to see themselves through the eyes of the rest of the world, rather than through the fantasy lens through which they are so used to viewing their country. Dennis Kucinich seems to me to be the Democratic candidate most willing and able to lead us in that direction.
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