Posted on 9/13/2006, 10:28:16 AM by Clive
The most insistent cliche in this year's Sept. 11 commemorations was an air on the theme of "squandered goodwill." You know: In the first days after the event, the whole world mourned with the United States. Why, Le Monde even ran an editorial under the headline, "We are all Americans." But then George Bush invaded Iraq, and all was lost. Today, America is more hated than ever.
Well, yes, America was popular, for a time. Of course they were: They had just been bombed. Everybody loves a victim, and never more so than when the victim is the most powerful nation on earth. Between America triumphant and America sobbing uncontrollably, other nations had to admit, they rather preferred the latter: America the wretched, America the bloodied. That kind of popularity, Americans could be forgiven for thinking, we can do without.
It was hard not to detect, besides, a little trill of self-love in all those foreign dirges and laments. How fine of us, it said, to put aside our differences with America in its time of trial. How moving it is, that we are so moved. Does it not speak well of us, that we could be so compassionate -- to one so undeserving? Even Americans excite our sympathy.
But of course, that wasn't the universal response. Not by a long shot. In fact, the reaction among many people was glee, or something close to it, and not only in those parts of the world it is permissible to express such sentiments openly: The ululating Palestinian women on the news that night were only the most overt examples.
Do we forget the instant chorus, in this country as elsewhere, lecturing the Americans, even as they poked through the rubble in search of their dead, that they had only themselves to blame? That, if they did not quite deserve to be incinerated by the thousands in their places of work, certainly it was understandable that others might feel that way? That, if such feelings were misplaced, nevertheless they must see how they, or their government, had contributed to them?
Remember? Remember that CBC Town Hall ("our hearts go out to the victims and their families, now what about the victims of American aggression") or the American ambassador to Britain, reduced to tears by a jeering audience on a similar program? Indeed, as David Frum has reminded us, even that famous Le Monde editorial took pains to admonish "an America whose cynicism has caught up with it."
So spare me your squandered goodwill. There was no midnight clear, when the world was one and angels played harps of gold. America was hated before Sept. 11, as it is hated now. That brief respite, five years ago, was the anomaly. It was inevitable that it would dissipate, and it is probable that any American president who responded in any way to the attacks would have encountered something like the same hostility and suspicion. It was under Clinton, recall, that European politicians began raising the alarm about "le hyperpower."
Has George Bush, in particular, and the policies he has pursued, exacerbated these fears? Probably. But that is surely a secondary consideration. The real question is whether they are the right policies; if so, the passions of his critics would rather recommend than discredit them.
It is striking how narrow a view of the meaning of Sept. 11 his critics seem to take, even five years later -- as if it were a discreet event, a one-off, unconnected to larger trends. Hence the early reluctance to call it what it was, an act of war, or the continuing fixation with whether Saddam Hussein was personally responsible -- as if the issue were avenging the last attack, rather than preventing the next.
Mr. Bush, I think, grasped intuitively what was at stake. Sept. 11, in this view, was not merely a crime, or even a declaration of war -- that had come three years earlier, though few were paying attention at the time. It was, more than anything, a boast. To declare war on the United States of America, after all, shows a certain ... audacity. To think you can get away with it, you either have to be crazy, or you have to be right.
As time wore on, it has become clear there is a little of both involved. That is what makes this threat so unlike any other: the fusion of apocalyptic intent with technological capacity, small groups of fanatics who would murder thousands or even millions of people if they could and who are two steps away from turning "could" into "can."
As we have learned, moreover, this is about much more than al-Qaeda, or the United States. With each new atrocity around the world, it grows more evident the real threat is Islamic extremism, and the real target is the civilized world (a cliche I am willing to endorse). Sunni or Shia; Arab, Persian or Pakistani: These are unimportant distinctions. What is important is their common willingness to kill in vast numbers.
No other consideration ranks higher than averting such a catastrophe: in the short term, by disarming their state sponsors; in the longer term, by "draining the swamps" that breed such ideologies. If that means courting unpopularity, so be it.
Maybe so. But many thousands of our enemies are dead.
"As we have learned, moreover, this is about much more than al-Qaeda, or the United States. With each new atrocity around the world, it grows more evident the real threat is Islamic extremism, and the real target is the civilized world."
From "The Widows Party" by Rudyard Kipling
excellent
Axhandle: Maybe so. But many thousands of our enemies are dead.
It is one of the imperatives of empire.
Being the world's only superpower means putting up with geopolitical hostility arising from that fact alone.
Well worth reading in detail.
Postulate: Every empire in history has ultimately fallen because of the influence of (a)religion.
I haven't thought of an example that would disprove this. Any thoughts?
Squandered goodwill is just code meaning "Look at all the foreign aid money we blew trying to buy friendship from people who hated us BEFORE 9/11"!
As the article notes - these people hated us before we did anything in the ME - they're just more open about it todaay.
Don't we teach our kids to do the right thing rather than the popular thing?
bubba was hated around the world, but dims want you to forget... islamics danced in the streets of the ME while people were still dying on 9/11... dims want you to forget... bubba upon visiting in Europe, euros protested in the streets, riots broke out, police dispersed with tear gas... dims want you to forget... well I ain't fergettin'!
LLS
Words are cheap.
"We are all Americans today"...
"Side-by-side until justice is done"....
The words of our European allies were true until they were asked to actually do something.
Don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk.
Rome.
BUMP!
Imperial Japan 1945
No religion brought them down. Just a good old fashioned ass kicking.
2. Formidable , prepared and willing to act without remorse to protect our own..you hate me.
I'll take option 2
A wonderful line out of a completely marvelous piece. If they would love us were we to wallow in our victimhood, then we will have to do without that love which, as Coyne points out, was never really there anyway.
Please send me a FReepmail to get on or off this Canada ping list.
We must face the truth that the rest of the world is in the grip of madness. The rest of the world has lost all ability to make moral judgements which makes them suicidal.
It's easy to stand on the sidelines cheering on terrorists and the countries that sponser them and do business with Europe in the vain hope that should Islam win they will remember their friends and allow France to remain France, Germany to remain Germany. That is their self delusion. These people are so morally depraved that they would gladly convert to Islam to save their skins.
Should America win their skins are saved and they can still hang on to their hate America jealousy and be resentful of the economic loss they will suffer with the defeat of Islam. So they figgure they are in a win, win position.
It is not America against Islam it is America against the world for the most part. A world America saved from Nazism, a world America rebuilt with it's own money, never to be repaid. A world America has sacrificed it manufacturing to in order to prop up nations that have no resources to support themselves.
Realizing this we should withdraw from the U.N. refuse to buy goods from any member nation that remains in the U.N., bring our maufacturing base back from over seas and only buy from our own. Disallow any foreign involvment in our corporations or infra-structure and let Europe sink or swim on it's own hook.
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