One and a Half Cheers for American Decline --- The Future’s Not Ours -- and That’s Good News

[kpete]

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Why the Troops Are Coming Home
Posted by Tom Engelhardt at 10:20am, September 21, 2010.

One and a Half Cheers for American Decline
The Future’s Not Ours -- and That’s Good News
By Tom Engelhardt

Compare two assessments of the American future:

In the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in which 61% of Americans interviewed considered “things in the nation” to be “on the wrong track,” 66% did “not feel confident that life for our children’s generation will be better than it has been for us.” (Seven percent were “not sure,” and only 27% “felt confident.”) But here was the polling question you’re least likely to see discussed in your local newspaper or by Washington-based pundits: “Do you think America is in a state of decline, or do you feel that this is not the case?” Sixty-five percent of respondents chose as their answer: “in a state of decline.”

Meanwhile, Afghan war commander General David Petraeus was interviewed last week by Martha Raddatz of ABC News. Asked whether the American war in Afghanistan, almost a decade old, was finally on the right counterinsurgency track and could go on for another nine or ten years, Petraeus agreed that we were just at the beginning of the process, that the “clock” was only now ticking, and that we needed “realistic expectations” about what could happen and how fast. “Progress” in Afghanistan, he commented, was often so slow that it could feel like “watching grass grow or paint dry.”

Now, I’m not a betting man, but I’d head for Vegas tomorrow and put my money down against the general and on Americans generally when it comes to assessing the future. I’d put money on the fact that http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175298/tomgram:_engelhardt,_why_the_troops_are_coming_home/the United States is indeed “in a state of decline” and I’d make a wager at odds that U.S. troops won’t be in Afghanistan in nine or ten years. And I’d venture to suggest as well that the two bets would be intimately connected, and that the American people understand at a visceral level far more than Washington cares to know about our real situation in the world. And I’d put my money on one more thing: however lousy it may feel, it’s not all bad news, not by a long shot.

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So here’s the good news: it’s actually going to feel better to be just another nation, one more country, even if a large and powerful one, on this overcrowded planet, rather than the nation. It’s going to feel better to only arm ourselves to defend our actual borders, rather than constantly fighting distant wars or skirmishes and endlessly preparing for more of the same. It’s going to feel better not to be engaged in an arms race of one or playing the role of the globe’s major arms dealer. It’s going to feel better to focus on American problems, maybe experiment a little at home, and offer the world some real models for a difficult future, instead of talking incessantly about what a model we are while we bomb and torture and assassinate abroad with impunity.

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more:

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Some of us have been saying for years that the US cannot maintain...

its position in the world.

There are simply too many smart, ambitious countries out there that insist we share some of the planet's bounty.

Our military has had its unspoken purpose to be guarding the world's resources and markets for our use. It's pissing in the wind to keep funding it when it is absolutely useless against two billion people living in India and China who want our standard of living.

We have to change, if not lower, our expectations and start dealing with others, not ordering them around. Europe learned that lesson, and is quite happy without any expensive empires to deal with.