Can you explain this "national myth of generosity"? I know JihadJane thinks that everything reported by the news media is a lie by the NWO or whoever she thinks REALLY runs the world, so maybe you can help me out here and let us know which of these things never happened:
1. The US protected the Muslims in Bosnia from the Serbs.
2. The US has been active in trying to prevent the atrocities in Darfur.
3. The US rescued Kuwait from Saddam.
4. The US attempted to stabilize Somalia and provide humanitarian relief there.
5. The US attempted to bring peace to Lebanon.
6. The US has fought for the rights of the Kurds.
7. The US provided earthquake relief in Pakistan.
8. The US provided aid to Indonesia in the wake of the horrible tsunami.
9. The US helped take the tyrannical Saddam Hussein out of power in Iraq.
10. The US helped Afghanistan evict the Soviets in Afghanistan, and is currently fighting the Taliban there.
Which of these 10 points (all from Freidman's op-ed linked to in the OP) are lies/myths?
Here's the problem with your list. There are value-laden statements in 3, 4, 5, 9 and 10. In attempting to come up with a list of "facts", you have inserted in these statements evaluations of these American actions that are debatable in some cases, and even if I were to agree that "rescuing Kuwait" was what America did there, this is not the way it was perceived in the wider ME and especially in Saudi Arabia.
The most altruistic of your examples would be the disaster relief and that is uncontroversial and true.
If you're trying to trap me into saying any of those things "didn't happen" you're not going to see me saying that. What I would disagree on is the way you packaged some of the items on your list. A packaging that displays the same weakness Friedman did, ascribing some form of higher benevolence to American policy. You did not use neutral language in these examples.
American involvement in Lebanon, for example, was highly controversial since it was perceived, accurately, to be in the service of the Israeli national interest. I don't have to tell you how that occupation reverberated across the middle east and planted the seeds of resentment. "Attempted to bring peace to Lebanon" is NOT the way most of the world outside America and Israel see it.
#9, "taking the fanatical Saddam Hussein out of power" is the way Americans see it. But this does not have currency beyond those borders save rare exceptions. In fact, this occupation is highly controversial and muslims do not see it as an extension of American benevolence to drop bombs and occupy a middle eastern country.
#10 is more straight with the language. Yes indeed, they helped "evict" the Soviets - then promptly left Afghanistan to crumble. Yes indeed, they are "fighting the Taliban", but what makes you think that's going to be a point in America's favour in the Middle East? Analysts have mentioned how the Taliban's ranks have been filled with the people reacting to mis-applied air strikes and American support of a thuggish government in Kabul, wouldn't these ranks have
thinned rather than grown if America's actions were guided by charity towards muslims?
#6 America was a latecomer to helping the Kurds and did little to address the brutal civil war between them and Turkey when it was more important to keep Turkey on-side, or when it was more important to keep Saddam onside prior to 1991. Also, I don't see how helping Kurds should score points with muslims.
Absent from this list would be sore points such as:
- support for brutal dictatorships that repressed their people in Iran, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere
- support for Israel
- misapplications of force that resulted in the deaths of innocents
Which is hardly comprehensive. But its not as if the whole of American interaction with muslims is contained within your 10 points, cherry-picked and sometimes given a gloss of altruism that is debatable.
Once you do that, cite the evidence that the US is at war with Islam in general.
I haven't contended that it IS so I don't see why I have to cite this apparent evidence. My contention was that American policy being guided by an altruistic charity towards muslims is farcical. Clearly, American policy is guided by perceptions of national self-interest, as it is for all states. To cast American policy of the past few decades as some benevolent "generosity" towards muslims is just as far-fetched as claiming it is in a war on Islam. America is pursuing its self-interest and sometimes that means scoring PR points by helping muslims in disaster zones or when doing so coincides with the national interest (NATO in Yugoslavia) and sometimes that means running occupations and conducting bombing campaigns and mass arrests in the occupation zones.
The thing underlying American policy is neither benevolence nor a hatred of the Muslim world, it is the age old calculations of national prestige, influence, resources, balance of power and the tamping down of perceived threats.
This has, on balance, alienated muslims more than it has garnered their sympathy for what should be obvious reasons.
Look, I don't think we're going to agree here. I don't plan on convincing you of anything. We're all products of our environment and its clear that you have internalized the same kinds of things Friedman has with regard to the nobility of American actions and that's to be expected. It would be a rare country indeed that didn't have its cheerleaders.
Just don't expect the rest of the world to share that perspective to the same degree.
And I
do think that much of the American policy establishment has internalized the same kind of understanding that you have with regards to its aims. I think that helping people in disaster zones that happened to be muslim wasn't just done out of a crass calculation to curry favour, but out of a genuine desire to help people. I think that there were many who
honestly believe that the two occupations in the Middle East are for the greater good of muslims. So I don't ascribe "evil" motivations to policy planners. Its just that once a national interest is identified it is natural for people designing policy to protect that interest to rationalize and ascribe a higher morality to it, even if in practise the evidence for doing so is thin.
This same kind of self-laudatory thing is by no means unique to Americans. Every country does the same without exception. Canada's self-perception as a noble "country of peacekeepers" for example (rooted in our involvement in Suez, Cyprus, etc etc) is our variation of it. And I think this sense of self-identity made us prone to involvement in flawed missions like Afghanistan, Somalia in the 90s and to some degree the NATO mission in Yugoslavia (which could have been better conducted, and conducted much earlier, even if I agree with the underlying aim).
Other historical examples of the "myth of generosity":
Take Andrew Jackson. Here's what Jackson said in a famous address
to Congress in 1830:
Rightly considered, the policy of the General Government toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous.
Yes, how true. One particularly generous thing Jackson's soldiers did at the Battle of Horse Shoe Bend in 1814 was cut strips of skin off dead Creek Indians and
then use them as bridles. And of course as president, Jackson generously enabled the Cherokee to experience the Trail of Tears.
Teddy Roosevelt felt just the same
as Jackson:
In [our] treaties we have been more than just to the Indians; we have been abundantly generous... No other conquering and colonizing nation has ever treated the original savage owners of the soil with such generosity as has the United States.
Roosevelt was eager to extend this generosity to the Philippines. As one Kansas soldier sent there put it, "The country won't be pacified until the ******* [ie, Filipinos] are killed off like the Indians." We weren't able to be quite that generous, but did manage to give around 200,000 Filipinos the gift of not living.
See what I'm getting at here? Friedman has subsumed his critical faculties in internalizing the myth of generosity. This is by no means historically unique, or unique to America.
An american tradition if there ever was one...
