Replant the American Dream - WaPo - David Ignatius

[rndmprsn]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/24/AR2005112400474.html



...I don't think Americans realize how much we have tarnished those ideals in the eyes of the rest of the world these past few years. The public opinion polls tell us that America isn't just disliked or feared overseas -- it is reviled. We are seen as hypocrites who boast of our democratic values but who behave lawlessly and with contempt for others. I hate this America-bashing, but when I try to defend the United States and its values in my travels abroad, I find foreigners increasingly are dismissive. How do you deny the reality of Abu Ghraib, they ask, when the vice president of the United States is actively lobbying against rules that would ban torture?

...When I began traveling as a foreign correspondent 25 years ago, I thought I understood what the face of evil looked like. There were governments that used torture against their enemies; they might call it "enhanced interrogation" or some other euphemism, but it was torture, and you just hoped, as an American, that you were never unlucky enough to be their prisoner. There were governments that "disappeared" people -- snatched them off the street and put them without charges in secret prisons where nobody could find them. There were countries that threatened journalists with physical harm.

As an American in those days, I felt that I traveled with a kind of white flag. We were different. The world knew it. We might have allies in the Middle East or Latin America who used such horrifying methods. But these were techniques that Americans would never, ever use -- or even joke about. That was our seed corn -- the fact that we were different.

...We must stop behaving as if we are in a permanent state of war, in which any practice is justified by the exigencies of the moment. That's my biggest problem with Vice President Cheney's anything-goes jeremiads against terrorism. They suggest we will always be at war, and so it doesn't matter what the world thinks of our behavior. That's a dangerously mistaken view. We are in a long war but not an endless one, and we need to begin rebuilding the bridges to normal life.

[DavidDvorkin]

1. Not even a long war: no war at all

Ignatius has taken a step, but he needs to go further.

This is not a war at all. It's a cynical attempt to destroy democracy at home and to establish an empire abroad, under the guise of a war against terrorism. If we even use the enemy's terms, such as War on Terror, then we're aiding and abetting the most dangerous enemy of America.

[wellst0nev0ter]

2. Too Little. Too Late.

Ignatius brought this on ourselves, and now he has regrets?

Screw off.

[Briar]

3. I do my sums and subtract 25 years

from 2005 and come up with 1980.

And no way did I, or most people in 1980, see the US in the way Ignatius claims we did.

"As an American in those days, I felt that I traveled with a kind of white flag. We were different. The world knew it. We might have allies in the Middle East or Latin America who used such horrifying methods. But these were techniques that Americans would never, ever use -- or even joke about. That was our seed corn -- the fact that we were different."

I knew about Viet Nam, Nixon, the dark and deadly deeds in Latin America, the School of the Americas and all that. And I knew what the election of Ronald Reagan meant.

[depakid]

4. The Post ignores everything but the torture issue

I don't get it. Their editors have essentially muzzled their writers on every other issue- yet they seem to want to come clean on this one.

There's something amiss. I wonder which person with power at that has a problem with torture (as opposed to the countless other far right abuses that the Post has actively promoted).