Manifest Mendacity

A man I know as “John (Sweden)” last evening posted a rather meaningful comment to one of the Mouse’s blogs. He wrote, in part: “America is one of civilization’s greatest tragedies, a failed democracy, and the number one threat and obstacle to peace and stability in the world.” John (S)’s statement was made in the context of a discussion of the Iraq war, in which the Mouse had opined – not exactly in these hackneyed words – that, while the invasion of that oil-rich country was ill-advised (to put it mildly), the U.S. now finds itself holding a tiger by the tail. To let go, and leave the tiger to its own designs could very well have disastrous effects.

John (S), after swapping remarks with another commenter, most of which could be dismissed as the sort of persiflage too often encountered in Internet “rooms,” finally broadened the discussion to a topic that could not so easily be set aside. When viewed within the context of that broader concern, the war in Iraq can be seen as merely a symptom of a deadly disease. America may indeed be “the number one threat and obstacle to peace and stability in the world.”

Once the notion struck me that John (S) might be right, I began to wonder how it could have come about that a nation founded on the ideals of human equality and “liberty and justice for all” could have become a monster to at least one reasonably intelligent man. Answering that question would be easy if it could be settled by solving the riddles of the current U.S. administration. There can be no question but that the nation’s ideals have been severely betrayed by George W. Bush and his accomplices. In even a modest expression of those ideals, no justification can be found for preemptive war, for misleading the American people with lies and distortions of fact, for eroding civil liberties, for, in effect, fomenting violence – all of which have become business as usual for our leadership. Yes, if it were that simple the problem could be solved very simply, by voting the miscreants out of office. But I suspect – no, I am convinced – the roots of the problem go much further back than the current occupant’s residency in the White House.

John (S) indirectly referred to the Vietnam War, and in retrospect I suppose most people would agree that war was a terrible mistake. And yet, it was justified at the time by honest civil servants as a continuation of a policy developed during the Eisenhower administration by John Foster Dulles. Designed to bankrupt the Soviet Union, Dulles’s “brinksmanship” strategy sought to keep the world on the brink of war, with the U.S. developing weapons of greater and greater technical capability, not intending necessarily to use them, but requiring the USSR to spend more than their fledgling economy could afford merely to keep up. Dulles was playing on Russian paranoia, an illness it acquired as a direct effect of the Stalinist purges and the tragic losses inflicted upon the Soviet people during WW II. The USSR countered by promoting a series of cheap guerilla type wars, the most significant for the U.S. being the war waged by Ho Chi Minh against the pseudo-American government of South Vietnam.

But even the so-called Cold War does not seem to have been the beginning of the malaise John (S) pointed to. America’s dealings with Mexico and the tribal nations of Native Americans reflected a small scale contagion of the Superpower mindset, a “childhood” disease as it were that has metastasized into an epidemic. We characterized those early violations of human rights as expressions of the nation’s “manifest destiny,” as if we, like the Joshua of the Old Testament, were empowered from on high to go forth and conquer. It seems never to have occurred to us to question those essentially empty words, accepting the evidence of our undeniable successes as proof of our divine authority.

The Spanish-American War finally brought into the open our belief that America was the “anointed of God.” Our quest for empire could no longer be glossed over as a territorial necessity. The islands of the Philippines were half-way around the world. We justified our murder of tens of thousands of native Filipinos in words that might have been spoken by an itinerant tent-show preacher: we were bringing Christianity to the heathens. That motive played well among the fundamentalist population of the late 1890s, with only a few voices being raised, notable among them one of my heroes, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain. But despite Clemens’ popularity, he was not heard. His was merely a voice of reason, with no chance at all against the jingoistic bellowing of the Hearst newspapers and, yes, the Old Rough Rider himself. The die was cast, and America was launched as a world super power.

The First World War solidified the casting, and our refusal to join the League of Nations, as merely one of many focused on world peace, confirmed that we regarded ourselves as something other than just another member of the herd of nations. We were, after all, the power that had snatched England's and France’s chestnuts out of the fire of the stalemated war, and brought Germany to its knees. Even today, the jingo lives on in our dogged reluctance to surrender even a part of our sovereignty to the United Nations.

Now all of this might have been for the good if we had based our “foreign entanglements” on the ideals of liberty and justice. Instead of enacting policies fraught with superstitious beliefs in manifest destiny and divine revelation, we could have adopted a “Lighthouse Policy,” demonstrating our righteousness by our example. If our system of government was the best – and there has never been a better – that fact, by itself, would have made more converts to democracy than our armies ever could – or will. If our system of limited capitalism was seen to produce more wealth than any other ever had or could, that fact too would have led at least the reasoning people of the world to emulation rather than hatred. If we had fought wars only for noble reasons, if we had never permitted our ideals to be sacrificed to delusions of grandeur, if we had humbly walked in the way of the ideas that must have been held in the hearts of the Founders, perhaps the world might not now see us as John (S) sees us, as a nation the world has passed by.

I grant, the Lighthouse Policy has never in history been implemented by any nation that was powerful enough to believe it could follow the path of conquest. As Thucydides wrote of the Athenian negotiation with the Milesians (before slaughtering them), “Of men we know, and of the Gods we suspect, they will rule where they can, and serve only where they must.” The madman Hegel wrote – though it took him roughly 400,000 words of bad German to say it: men are either masters or slaves, and desire to be the former. No powerful nation has for very long pursued a path lit by reason. All have followed where their lust for power would take them.

And here we are.

We are tempted to believe the world might be different if men would only come to their senses. Unfortunately, we must deal with people as they are, and not as we wish they were. This nation was not established to change men’s nature, but rather to establish a framework of order and justice within which men might seek their own sense of righteousness, and see to their own happiness. The United States of America was never created to be a world power, nor a savior of humankind. That it has come to this must be seen as a gradual assault of our demons upon the nobler angels of our ideals. It was to be expected, that when men use words without knowing their meaning, when nations feel they are “called” to “liberate” the world by force of arms … it was to be expected that at least one, and maybe two, reasonably intelligent men would see America as “a failed democracy, and the number one threat and obstacle to peace and stability in the world.”

But fret not, John (S). So long as it remains possible for men to speak and write words describing the ideals of the American dream, so long as people like yourself continue to keep alive – if only flickeringly so – the principles upon which this nation was founded …then this too shall pass and we shall see a rebirth of freedom, not forced upon the world, but growing out of the pure vision kept in your heart.

But what a pity that so many innocents have been caused to die by the blindness and stone-heartedness of those who are led by a will to power.