[FONT="] To be politically forthright here, if not exactly politically correct, the rich, dominant nations of the modern world order, with the United States as their point man, neocolonially force themselves, i.e. their will and agenda and selfish economic interests, their political system, their culture and entertainment industry, their secularism, etc. upon the disempowered peoples of so-called “underdeveloped” societies. This naturally enough results in the resentment and retaliation we see coming from the “Third World”, which unfortunately sometimes manifests as “terrorism”.
[FONT="] But, of course, like street gang members who feel unfairly picked on when the police aggressively target them, as if their own bad behavior hasn’t brought on the righteous reprisals of the community they prey on, we in the economically and technologically high-powered countries make out that we’re just the innocent victims of extremists and madmen. We take no portion of responsibility for the hostility and hate internationally incurred by the bad behavior of the corporate kingpins and politicians who rule us. We’re just too darn arrogantly convinced of our own moral goodness, as a society, to own up to how we engender the anti-Western ill will on the streets of Caracas, Cairo, and Kuala Lumpur.
[FONT="] Every society, of course, indoctrinates its citizens with a positive national self-image, and with an ideological worldview that patly rationalizes its shortcomings and sins. This is perhaps taken a bit further in the United States than in, say, Bangladesh or Belgium. For, alas, the people of the United States have a good deal more to rationalize and justify than nations without a “manifest destiny”, so to speak. The overcompensating result is that while you find national egos raging in every country, the American national ego often seems to rage more than most. In other words, Americans tend to be uncritically self-assured of their own national greatness and goodness. Being a superpower, and the only country currently enjoying bragging rights to that toplofty tag; being technologically advanced; economically powerful; militarily mighty; the light-bearer of democracy; and, last but not least, being, in the minds of its own citizens at least, a “nice” nation, a morally superior boy scout, do-gooder country, well, no wonder that many Americans can’t imagine that their grand and god-blessed land is anything other than a benevolent force for progress and freedom.
[FONT="] And of course the official, whitewashed version of history and current events that we’re all taught in school and by the mainstream media supports and reinforces this self-flattering national self-identity. Except for those who choose to educate themselves, the average American is blissfully insulated from the dark and damning truth of the brutally and bloodily greedy activities of his society’s ruling class around the world. Indeed, although the voracious money-hunger of the capitalist elite, and the methods and machinations by which it feasts itself on the natural and human resources of LDCs (less developed countries), constitute one of the most heinous ongoing crimes against humanity in history, we the people of the U.S., the UK, Japan, Germany, etc. get to continue fancying ourselves the harmless and humanitarian world citizens!
[FONT="] So, when the Howard Beales of the pauperized South shout over to us in the filthy-rich North that they’re "as mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!", when they shout this with vehement words, with public protests and the burning of American flags, or with “terrorist” bombs, we’re utterly perplexed and latch onto self-complacent explanations. We tell ourselves that they hate us because they envy us, or because they don’t want to live under the rule of law, or because they’re irrational religious fanatics, and so forth. And if these self-absolving explanations don’t pop into our minds by themselves, they’re promptly planted there by the commentators and talking heads on TV.
[FONT="] Believing then, naively and narcissistically, that our saintly society is a blameless target of unprovoked hate, we retreat into both a victim’s mentality – in which the big bad Third World is out to get us for no good reason – and into a righteous and retributive anger that get’s people literally dancing in the streets when one of our national bogeymen is assassinated. Instead of seeking to make anti-Western “terrorism” a thing of the past by doing the right thing, by addressing and redressing the legitimate and substantial grievances of the LDCs, instead of fighting terrorism by fighting for social, economic, and political justice at home and abroad, we beef up domestic security and claim to be fighting a global “War on Terror”.
[FONT="] Well, to make matters even worse, our sanctimonious “War on Terror” isn’t even a good faith campaign to “get the bad guys” – note that it took more than a decade to finally get Osama, hardly proof that we’re engaged in a sincere effort to stamp out the terrorist threat! – rather, it’s a morally phony-baloney cover for the U.S. to throw its weight around in the pursuit of a more secure lock on its status of being the only world superpower. It’s a pious pretense for stretching out the “American Century” a bit longer. It’s a dissembling, duplicitous fa?ade for American imperialism. That is, it’s further reason for “them” to feel antipathy for “us”.
[FONT="] And, to the extent that the “War on Terror” really is an attempt to put an end to international terrorism, well, we’re going about it in a rather counterproductive fashion. Our government’s tack, essentially, is to use fear and violence to exercise its putative moral authority as the world’s policeman. Quite simply, we’re trying to out-terrorize the terrorists. Of course we use euphemisms for our own terrorism, such as “Guantanamo Bay”, “waterboarding”, “cruise missile strikes”, “invasion”, “occupation”, and “war”. But we should know by now that, in the wise words of the movie Star Wars, fear leads to anger and hate, and anger and hate pull everyone into the dark side. And while I’m at it with the clich?s, to state a well-worn political and psychological truism, violence breeds more violence. At the end of the day of reckoning, we’re going to find that we’ve just created a more oppositional geopolitical situation for ourselves.
[FONT="] Oh, we can continue to torture prisoners and use privacy-invading techniques of intelligence gathering, which will give us the occasional feel-good victory, such as the recent execution slaying of bin Laden, but at the sacrifice of the very moral authority that we feel entitles us to use such methods in the first place. By playing into such an ethical paradox Americans only lower themselves in the eyes of the world, and come to look like thugs every bit as much as the “terrorists”.
[FONT="] Last night I saw Alan Dershowitz discussing this very question on the Piers Morgan show. He raised the issue of how America should resolve its hypocrisy about the high-handed and abusive methods it’s employed to finally find bin Laden, and to fight its asymmetrical war with its Third World enemies. Our options are three.
[FONT="] Option #1, we can resolve our hypocrisy by renouncing our highfalutin principles and going full-out with a ruthless modus operandi. Or, option #2, we can continue to perfidiously profess to be in favor of certain ethical and law-abiding behavioral norms while clandestinely violating those norms right and left when it serves us to do so. Or, finally, option #3, we can begin to actually walk the goody-goody talk we like to talk out of our backsides. We can forsake cruel and unusual forms of interrogation, and illegal wiretaps, etc. We can dare to genuinely respect everyone’s human rights and dignity and take our chances. [FONT="]Dershowitz [FONT="]never really made it decisively clear which option he favors, but it’s clear which option Obama has chosen. The USA’s pres seems to prefer option #2, hypocrisy, i.e. business as usual.
[FONT="] You might be thinking “Surprise, surprise, he’s a politician after all!; true, but the problem is that nothing instills resentment quite like hypocrisy, and just because we’ve come to expect it from our political leaders doesn’t mean that those on the receiving end of our national hypocrisy will apathetically dismiss it the way we do. They’re more likely to be irked by it into hardening their line against America and the “First World”. Sure, our hypocrisy may garner short-term gains for us, and allow us to continue to enjoy feeling holier-than-thou, which is the temptation. But in the long run it only sends more fuming folks into the camp of the “terrorists”.
[FONT="]
The conclusion is located directly below
[FONT="] But, of course, like street gang members who feel unfairly picked on when the police aggressively target them, as if their own bad behavior hasn’t brought on the righteous reprisals of the community they prey on, we in the economically and technologically high-powered countries make out that we’re just the innocent victims of extremists and madmen. We take no portion of responsibility for the hostility and hate internationally incurred by the bad behavior of the corporate kingpins and politicians who rule us. We’re just too darn arrogantly convinced of our own moral goodness, as a society, to own up to how we engender the anti-Western ill will on the streets of Caracas, Cairo, and Kuala Lumpur.
[FONT="] Every society, of course, indoctrinates its citizens with a positive national self-image, and with an ideological worldview that patly rationalizes its shortcomings and sins. This is perhaps taken a bit further in the United States than in, say, Bangladesh or Belgium. For, alas, the people of the United States have a good deal more to rationalize and justify than nations without a “manifest destiny”, so to speak. The overcompensating result is that while you find national egos raging in every country, the American national ego often seems to rage more than most. In other words, Americans tend to be uncritically self-assured of their own national greatness and goodness. Being a superpower, and the only country currently enjoying bragging rights to that toplofty tag; being technologically advanced; economically powerful; militarily mighty; the light-bearer of democracy; and, last but not least, being, in the minds of its own citizens at least, a “nice” nation, a morally superior boy scout, do-gooder country, well, no wonder that many Americans can’t imagine that their grand and god-blessed land is anything other than a benevolent force for progress and freedom.
[FONT="] And of course the official, whitewashed version of history and current events that we’re all taught in school and by the mainstream media supports and reinforces this self-flattering national self-identity. Except for those who choose to educate themselves, the average American is blissfully insulated from the dark and damning truth of the brutally and bloodily greedy activities of his society’s ruling class around the world. Indeed, although the voracious money-hunger of the capitalist elite, and the methods and machinations by which it feasts itself on the natural and human resources of LDCs (less developed countries), constitute one of the most heinous ongoing crimes against humanity in history, we the people of the U.S., the UK, Japan, Germany, etc. get to continue fancying ourselves the harmless and humanitarian world citizens!
[FONT="] So, when the Howard Beales of the pauperized South shout over to us in the filthy-rich North that they’re "as mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!", when they shout this with vehement words, with public protests and the burning of American flags, or with “terrorist” bombs, we’re utterly perplexed and latch onto self-complacent explanations. We tell ourselves that they hate us because they envy us, or because they don’t want to live under the rule of law, or because they’re irrational religious fanatics, and so forth. And if these self-absolving explanations don’t pop into our minds by themselves, they’re promptly planted there by the commentators and talking heads on TV.
[FONT="] Believing then, naively and narcissistically, that our saintly society is a blameless target of unprovoked hate, we retreat into both a victim’s mentality – in which the big bad Third World is out to get us for no good reason – and into a righteous and retributive anger that get’s people literally dancing in the streets when one of our national bogeymen is assassinated. Instead of seeking to make anti-Western “terrorism” a thing of the past by doing the right thing, by addressing and redressing the legitimate and substantial grievances of the LDCs, instead of fighting terrorism by fighting for social, economic, and political justice at home and abroad, we beef up domestic security and claim to be fighting a global “War on Terror”.
[FONT="] Well, to make matters even worse, our sanctimonious “War on Terror” isn’t even a good faith campaign to “get the bad guys” – note that it took more than a decade to finally get Osama, hardly proof that we’re engaged in a sincere effort to stamp out the terrorist threat! – rather, it’s a morally phony-baloney cover for the U.S. to throw its weight around in the pursuit of a more secure lock on its status of being the only world superpower. It’s a pious pretense for stretching out the “American Century” a bit longer. It’s a dissembling, duplicitous fa?ade for American imperialism. That is, it’s further reason for “them” to feel antipathy for “us”.
[FONT="] And, to the extent that the “War on Terror” really is an attempt to put an end to international terrorism, well, we’re going about it in a rather counterproductive fashion. Our government’s tack, essentially, is to use fear and violence to exercise its putative moral authority as the world’s policeman. Quite simply, we’re trying to out-terrorize the terrorists. Of course we use euphemisms for our own terrorism, such as “Guantanamo Bay”, “waterboarding”, “cruise missile strikes”, “invasion”, “occupation”, and “war”. But we should know by now that, in the wise words of the movie Star Wars, fear leads to anger and hate, and anger and hate pull everyone into the dark side. And while I’m at it with the clich?s, to state a well-worn political and psychological truism, violence breeds more violence. At the end of the day of reckoning, we’re going to find that we’ve just created a more oppositional geopolitical situation for ourselves.
[FONT="] Oh, we can continue to torture prisoners and use privacy-invading techniques of intelligence gathering, which will give us the occasional feel-good victory, such as the recent execution slaying of bin Laden, but at the sacrifice of the very moral authority that we feel entitles us to use such methods in the first place. By playing into such an ethical paradox Americans only lower themselves in the eyes of the world, and come to look like thugs every bit as much as the “terrorists”.
[FONT="] Last night I saw Alan Dershowitz discussing this very question on the Piers Morgan show. He raised the issue of how America should resolve its hypocrisy about the high-handed and abusive methods it’s employed to finally find bin Laden, and to fight its asymmetrical war with its Third World enemies. Our options are three.
[FONT="] Option #1, we can resolve our hypocrisy by renouncing our highfalutin principles and going full-out with a ruthless modus operandi. Or, option #2, we can continue to perfidiously profess to be in favor of certain ethical and law-abiding behavioral norms while clandestinely violating those norms right and left when it serves us to do so. Or, finally, option #3, we can begin to actually walk the goody-goody talk we like to talk out of our backsides. We can forsake cruel and unusual forms of interrogation, and illegal wiretaps, etc. We can dare to genuinely respect everyone’s human rights and dignity and take our chances. [FONT="]Dershowitz [FONT="]never really made it decisively clear which option he favors, but it’s clear which option Obama has chosen. The USA’s pres seems to prefer option #2, hypocrisy, i.e. business as usual.
[FONT="] You might be thinking “Surprise, surprise, he’s a politician after all!; true, but the problem is that nothing instills resentment quite like hypocrisy, and just because we’ve come to expect it from our political leaders doesn’t mean that those on the receiving end of our national hypocrisy will apathetically dismiss it the way we do. They’re more likely to be irked by it into hardening their line against America and the “First World”. Sure, our hypocrisy may garner short-term gains for us, and allow us to continue to enjoy feeling holier-than-thou, which is the temptation. But in the long run it only sends more fuming folks into the camp of the “terrorists”.
[FONT="]
The conclusion is located directly below
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