© 2006 UrbisMedia
Back in the Spring of 1979 I was on the roof of a pensione in Sorrento, Italy, looking east as the sun played in the waters of the Bay of Naples and gilded the cone of Vesuvius. I was sneaking a cigarette because my wife and daughters, down below in our room, were on a crusade to get me to quit.
As it happened there was another man on the roof also having a smoke. He was a German and probably twenty-five years older than me, and we fell into conversation. He learned his first English words and phrases, which were now quite good, when he surrendered to American forces near the end of WWII. He felt fortunate not to have had to surrender to the Russians for reasons that needed no elaboration. In the six months he spent in the POW camp he learned rudimentary English and began an affection for Americans. That affection grew when, later, the Marshall Plan helped him revive the family micro brewery. Now he was near retirement, which he could enjoy in traveling to places like Italy.
Listening to that German praise my country I felt very proud that day to be an American, to be liked and respected just because I was an American, to be told by a former enemy that I came from a great and wise country. I had occasion, on making the acquaintance of many other foreigners in the twenty-five years I spent escorting tours of Americans and on my other travels, to feel proud to be an American. I never needed nor did put a bumper sticker on my car saying so, but I often wore and American flag pin when I was abroad. Cab drivers, waiters, hotel people, people from all walks of life said good things about America to me, and yes, several would smile, thrust a thumbs-up and say “ Cleentone , like Cleentone , good man.”
Those days are gone. The American reputation abroad plummeted as fast and deep as did the twin towers on 911. For a brief period there was a wave of sympathy for Americans as many nations condoled with us and offered their support. That was all spent and dissipated with the clumsy, misguided preemptive war on Iraq, the foolish xenophobic lashing out at immigrants and guests, and the sheer swaggering arrogance of defining a world that was either “with us or against us.”
We are the richest, most powerful nation in the world, and we have come to use our wealth for bribery and our power to bully. We have refused to see that our past policies and alliances bear some of the blame for the attitudes that have been expressed in terror, refused to see issues in other than black and white, good and evil, with us or against us. Nothing justifies terror, but something causes it, and while it might need to be dealt with harsh measures, those measures should be carefully and appropriately focused lest they come to be a terror themselves.
American will squander between one and two trillion dollars on the war in Iraq, an expenditure that will weaken our society and plunge it into debt that will match the deficit of good will it has cost us. [1] Some see George Bush and his minions as men for such times, but they are not. They have isolated and weakened us, and they have made many of us less proud, even ashamed, to be Americans. They have brought shame upon us when they could have earned America great credit, respect and love from the world. They have lived by the ugly historical truth that the people, enough of them at least, will always accept tyranny to assuage their fears, their terrors.
Think about it. What far smaller amount than the squandered billions in Iraq could have done for the millions that die of malaria and AIDS in the third world; what it could have done if it went to research and doctors, hospitals, improved public health infrastructure. Think what praises would be sung of an America that took the lead in aiding the victims of natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes. Think how much more appealing the blessings of democracy might seem when delivered with the hand of peace, and without the hubris of cultural and religious superiority.
Instead, in its terror, America has delivered itself into the hands of an incompetent buffoon, who is arguably the most despised human on the planet, and whose bellicosity and arrogance have soiled the reputation of a far better nation and better people than he deserves to “lead.” His rationale for his war in Iraq has shifted more quickly, and less predictably, than the sands of that country and innocent Iraqis are dying at a rate far faster than they did under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. And the world has watched, with horror and sorrow, as America has seemingly transmogrified into a reflection of the twisted logic of its own tyrant. They have seen it fall away from its principles, its leaders corrupted by their power and a worldview befitting the dark ages.
I sometimes think back to that encounter with the German brewer in Sorrento. If he’s still around I wonder what he might think of America and American’s today. [2] Maybe he can see past our current nadir, back to when we were admired, and when people wanted to emulate our “democracy” because we taught by example, with the carrot, not the stick. Perhaps he will see these days as an unfortunate, but temporary, period of American history. Perhaps we can still regain the respect and adulation that we used to get from the world community. But first we need to learn again to teach by example: we need to show military strength when it is called for, and, as importantly, focus it where the offense originates. We need to examine the causes of that offense honestly and fully, not characterize it in absolutes and simplistic political sound-bites, as good and evil. To strike out at the nearest, most convenient “enemy” is what a drunk does in a bar, not what a nation must do in a complex and changing world.
America could have shown great character in its response to being attacked, and still, and more effectively, exacted its due vengeance upon the perpetrators. It could have done so without the destruction of a nation to putatively “save it” and incurring the wrath of many of those it claims to have saved. It could have achieved such ends without squandering what will be trillions of dollars, much of it to enrich corporations with political connections. It could have done so by exposing its strengths rather than its weaknesses.
America could have made us proud to me American’s again when we are at home or abroad. It could have shown character and judiciousness. It could have shown itself to be better for its injuries, better than a drunken bully yelling “bring ‘em on” in a bar, not looking for the right fight, by the easy fight. But a drunken bully is exactly what America’s vaunted “democracy” gave us.
___________________________________
©2006, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 2.14.2006)
[1] The sheer profligacy of the expenditure of the American taxpayer’s money is criminal. As a segment of CBS’s 60 Minutes broadcast on 2.12.2006 pointed out, between $8 and $9Billion dollars sent to Iraq in cash is completely unaccounted for. That amount excludes the overcharging for services by Halilburton and its subsidiaries.
[2] Not likely I’ll meet him as before since I managed to quit smoking many years ago.