It’s not very often that I end up in a situation that makes me feel like a moderate, so I felt this was worth expressing in words.
So, I studied abroad in Europe, at a very liberal university (as most are in the EU at this point), and I was studying International Development, so I ended up in a lot of seminars where the main theme was “European hippies bashing the US for all sorts of reasons, even though it was obvious they knew nothing about American politics nor had they ever been to the US.” And I did learn a lot, and I think so did they, because I participated actively, and reminded them that Americans do, in fact, also have points of view and educations in political science and maybe, just maybe, something interesting to add to the conversation. Not a fashionable thing to say right now, I know.
Let me just set something straight. I’m not little miss poster-child patriot right wing flag waiver. Ha. Far from it. I’ve been more than happy to admit there are any number of faults in this country’s government, but it’s also my home, and I also believe that there are some virtues that get missed when people engage in the typical uninformed, canned US-bashing that happens to be chic at the moment. And that’s just the problem. It’s canned, uninformed, and over-repeated, and people just eat it up because it’s the political fad at the moment.
Yes, the US empire is going to fall, ok, we get that. But I went to this lecture today, and it was so awful because, as a political scientist, it was so hard for me not to a) interrupt him rudely or b) leave the room rudely. At first I was thinking, this guy is a total crack - he’s lost it. He’s 80 years old, he must have been good in his earlier days, but he’s gone now, and this is even a little bit embarrassing. But then I started to listen a little while longer, and I recognized the exact same crap I was listening to at SOAS in London - uninformed, poorly thought through, impractical, canned anti-US crap.
He mentions the imperialism of having US military bases around the world, and how the “global feeling” is that the US should just withdraw all those bases right now and go home. From everywhere. And that everyone agrees about that.
A couple of things on this.
1) South Korea. The South Korean government does not want the US to withdraw bases from its soil, that’s why we’re still there. Believe it or not, we’ve been trying to scale down our military presence there for the past 7-10 years but every time we get to a certain point the SK government, no matter how left-leaning, flips out and begs us to come back. Remember who’s looming right on the other side of the DMZ there. Yeah, and remember who’s guarding that DMZ. Right. I’m not saying we haven’t made mistakes - the behavior of the US marines against SK civilians a few years back was unforgivable, heinous, and absolutely inexcusable under any circumstances, civilian or military. Nonetheless, our bases are needed there as a force for peace. This may be hard to comprehend but try to look at it from the perspective of someone who has to look at that fence every day. Would you rather see an American GI or an NK First Guard looking back at you?
We don’t actually do anything in SK anymore, but the presence is symbolic, and the nature of the balance of power in Northeast Asia is such that if one piece were removed the entire structure could crumble, and I don’t think it’s wise to force the US to be that piece.
2) We are scaling down our bases in Europe. By 2010, most of our GI’s in Germany will be in Iraq. Lucky them. They’re thrilled.
3) How would an isolationist US foreign policy help the world right now? What these people say they want is the US out of everything, right now. Basically, they want to return to the sort of Jeffersonian isolationist America where we feared “foreign entanglements” abroad and stayed happily protected by our little oceans. (Right up until the exact same people who are telling us to do that came begging us for help with their stupid wars) - a demand like this betrays an overwhelmingly limited knowledge of international politics and international political economy. Whether you like it or not, this is a globalized world — the United States, though we provide percentage-wise, the smallest portion of aid by GDP, provides one of the largest gross amounts of foreign assistance, in addition to technical assistance, FDI, etc.
Not to mention special assistance packages such as the ones to Israel and Egypt, our two largest recipients of aid. Okay, US out. Suddenly, the two countries we promised to protect (from each other, no less) go to war. Bye bye, Middle East/North Africa, because you just lost your stabilizing force, we’re not there to keep a lid on Israel, the treaty between Egypt and Israel is gone, and they’re both armed to the teeth and scared shitless of each other. Good plan!
And can we talk about India and Pakistan for a moment? Can anyone say nuclear war? Fun times.
Standing international arrangements, norms, financial and capital flows, the importance of foreign assistance, and the role of the United States in stabilization and humanitarian assistance as well as economic engagement make this demand not only ridiculous but completely impossible. Even if we wanted to - how would we go about doing that, oh Doomsday Seers?
Then, my favorite part, he goes into American domestic politics which is great because he’s never actually lived here or studied that, and he asks “where will resistance come from within the US?” He goes on to answer his own question, saying where it won’t come from: The American South (which he completely generalizes as the “Southern Baptist Convention”), it won’t come from women, it won’t come from “blacks”, it won’t come from “hispanics” (on this he quotes his ‘friend’ Sam Huntington)…..
I’m just going to leave out the blatant racism from this, except to say that anyone who quotes Samuel Huntington immediately loses my respect. The old racist bastard and Cheney adviser devised “The Hispanic Problem” as the next issue facing the “Clash of Civilizations” and wouldn’t recommend interracial relationships because cultural differences are simply irreconcilable. You know, all that tribal stuff and whatnot.
Resistance is everywhere! The only person who could make a statement like this is someone who has spent less than a month in total on US soil. As a young woman who marched both in Seattle at the WTO protest at 16 years old and had her first experience of tear gas at that young age, and also who marched on Washington in the March for Women’s Lives in 2004 with over a million of my fellow women activists, I have a hard fucking time buying this statement. Everywhere I go I see resistance. It comes in people of every color, every class, every gender and ever sexuality. Protests, passive resistance, college forums, movements, push towards education - it’s all there. But someone who just looks at the surface wouldn’t see that.
Someone who looks at the South and generalizes it in a way that was clearly meant to be derogatory probably wouldn’t see that many of the poorest counties in the deep South vote dependably democrat. They’d discount that, or they wouldn’t even notice because it doesn’t fit in with their propaganda line.
Yeah, we’ve got our idiots. So what? Everywhere does. But we’ve also got our activists. I’d venture to say, some of the best, and most educated, in the entire world. But if you don’t look, then how can you expect to find them? And if you discount everything you see, what do you expect to find?
He also made a comment that really got under my skin, about how the seat of all killing, (like in the world) was in Seattle, with Boeing.
I’d like to clear up that though Boeing has factories in Seattle, the headquarters are now in another city. And if you want to insult my city and insult Boeing, fine, but I’d like you to think about the 380,000 people who lost their jobs when that company decided with no reason to leave Seattle after years of serving as an economic foundation for Seattle’s development. Boeing left, Seattle still hasn’t recovered.
Maybe the headquarters of Boeing are evil puppetmasters of death, but the truth is that the people who got hurt in Seattle are Americans who had devoted their lives to that damned company and then suddenly had nothing. Boeing betrayed Seattle, betrayed 380,000 Americans who have families, many of whom became homeless shortly thereafter. It was a crisis that still hurts Seattle. So go ahead, make a jab at my city. You clearly don’t care about the cost of human life when it’s American suffering.
And jab my city. Go on, insult it. It’s rated the #1 most fuel efficient, greenest, most eco-conscious city in the United States by several independent analysts. It’s also one of the most politically liberal cities in the country.
But go ahead. You’ve probably never been there. You’ve never had a friend who had to drop out of school because her dad went to work one day and his job wasn’t there. Go on. Sure, it’s the seat of all killing. Because of Boeing. Tell that to those people, I’m sure they’d love to hear that.
But if you’d like to be accurate in your next speech, Boeing is now located in the beautiful city of Chicago. Thank you.
Yes, the Iraq war sucks. Yes, the American media lies a lot. Find me a country whose media doesn’t. Ok, our health care system bites - you think it’s better in Europe? Well try waiting 2 years for urgent surgery in England because NHS is backed up. Yeah, Social Security blows and should be better, but try living in a ghetto/slum in Paris where you have no rights and no voice and work under the radar for less than $2/day. It’s not really all that romantic anywhere else. Really. Yeah, we’ve made some pretty big mistakes, domestically and abroad. So go ahead, be anti-US, criticize America - I do all the time. But please, do it in an educated way. Because otherwise you’re just as ignorant as the other side, just eating up a line of bullshit propaganda that you don’t understand, and making yourself sound like an ass in the process.
