-Caveat Lector- http://www.sundayherald.com/28001
Sunday Herald - 29 September 2002 Enemy Of The States Saddam Hussein may be his latest Most Wanted but with George W Bush declaring that if you're not with him you're against him, you -- along with millions of others, including US citizens -- might also be a foe of America, says Ian Bell AL Gore is anti-American. The chancellor of Germany is anti-American. Anyone who criticises Israel is anti-American. All those who marched through London yesterday are anti- American. Opponents of Tony Blair are anti-American. Much of the Democratic Party of the United States are anti- American. Europeans, in general, are anti-American and anti- Semitic to boot. It's possible the US joint chiefs of staff are anti-American. It turns out that I'm anti-American, too, if a year's worth of accusing email traffic and White House pronouncements are anything to go by. I choose the examples more or less at random, more or less seriously. It is not so difficult, in these days, to find yourself faced with the 21st century's equivalent of the old cold war question: 'Are you now, or have you ever been ...?' The new synonym for traitor has achieved an international currency and is being applied, more or less indiscriminately, to anyone, of all faiths and none, who happens to be made a little queasy by the doctrine of a pre-emptive, purgative war. Which is odd. First, I personally do not recall experiencing any loss of love or admiration for America. If it happened -- and I beg leave to doubt -- it happened without any help from me. My reservations towards the great republic are much as they always were. My scepticism is also balanced, as before, by the knowledge of the many impressive things that can be labelled Made in America. Constitution, Bill of Rights, freedom of speech and assembly, the eradication of fascism, the rule of law, the democratic impulse and the old, instinctive opposition to colonialism: it's a hefty list, and one difficult to scorn. Besides -- my second problem -- I find it difficult to understand how it is actually possible to be sincerely anti-American, as much as you might like to try. The world isn't like that. Our society is built around American goods, cultural goods in particular, and American ideas. You might define it all as a subtle, obnoxious imperialism, but if so you have to stop watching their movies, stop listening to their music, stop reading their novels, eating their burgers, buying their fashions and using their software. You have to insulate yourself, somehow, from your own daily existence. As it turns out, the good stuff comes from the same place as the bad stuff. There is a lot of good stuff though. My own mental album contains the endless green hills of New Hampshire and the desert sunsets of Arizona, the ineffable buzz of Manhattan and those reverent crowds hauling themselves up a long staircase in Washington just to see Lincoln's memorial. I've known people who were redneck parodies of themselves and people who defied all the European stereotypes, courtly, smart, idealistic and utterly confident, in a way no other nation has ever been confident, of their rights and freedoms. Now, it seems, I hate them and everything they ever stood for. That's the charge, more or less. It has been in the air for most of my lifetime. Chile or Vietnam, world trade or cruise missiles, Cuba or conservation: if you're not with us, as George W Bush is fond of saying, you are against us. Suddenly there is no middle ground, or any desire for one. When the German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder cannily listens to his own electorate rather than the White House he becomes a non- person. When Gore denounces Bush for squandering America's moral capital since September 11, or when his Democratic colleagues quibble over the threat to workers' rights implicit in the Homeland Security bill, the President blandly retorts that such individuals 'are not interested in the security of the American people'. Which American people, George? According to the Washington Post the joint chiefs are opposed to a war on Iraq. If the White House is interested in logic, that puts the generals on the list of suspects. Yet logic is currently so scarce that even casting a little reasonable doubt over Blair's Iraq 'dossier' will place you, citizen of a free European democracy, among the ranks of America's enemies. Should you go further and object to Israel's behaviour the process of criminalisation by proxy -- any sort of dissent seems to be enough -- will be complete. Remember what Europe did to the Jews; criticise the government of Israel and you join the vile mob. Such is being said, freely and frequently, in the salons of the Republican right. Some critics of the US make it easy for the hawks and super patriots, of course. There is a certain myopia abroad that somehow makes it impossible, in certain quarters, to view two apparently contradictory propositions at once. 'Americans' are dragging us towards a stupid and illegal war; 'Americans', millions of them, are deeply uneasy over or downright opposed to such a war, and to a military doctrine that tramples over their finest traditions, particularly the one that holds unprovoked warfare in abhorrence. In that America's book, the book with chapters reserved for Pearl Harbour and September 11, the other guy has to start it first. I know which America alarms me, but the broad brush smears all. It taints you across miles of ocean, disallows any honour you might ever have granted to Bob Dylan or Herman Melville, to Orson Welles or Malcolm X. Are anti-Americans disqualified from admiring The West Wing, Frank Capra or Woody Allen? Did the Simpsons just get conscripted with Bobby Kennedy and Dr King? Am I against New England town meetings, the Gettysburg Address and the Library of Congress? Where do the Marx Brothers and Jackson Pollock fit in? I understand US politics, up to a point. I know about the oil, the congressional elections, America's economic problems and the long history of US isolationism, blood kin to grouchy unilateralism, that drives the Republican right. But there is something deeper than that going on behind the now- routine charge of anti-Americanism. The historians call it exceptionalism, the sense that the US is a special, even unique case, the belief that America is beyond question the greatest country the world has seen, and the conviction that anyone who doesn't always agree must be an enemy. Some Americans, a large number of them, don't understand why other people don't understand them. September 11 gave some of them cause, so they think, to put the worst possible interpretation on that confusion. The truth, nevertheless, is not that complicated: you can be anti-American this week, pro- American the next. If you actually happen not to be American you have every right, even a duty, to tell Bush where to stick his war. That doesn't mean that you are working and praying for the destruction of the United States of America. Quite the opposite, in fact. Indeed, if you are inclined to admit that the US has made something of a contribution to the world, dissent from its excesses is the best act of friendship possible. To the likes of George W and the wolf pack around him such sentiments sound typically and spinelessly European. Bush is not a student of moral complexity. But if he is not entitled to launch a war in your name or mine, neither has he the right to define you or me as an enemy alien. The spread of American culture, if nothing else, has gone too far for that. Besides, president or not, Bush is not America, mercifully. The paradox remains American, nevertheless. The US exports influence and ideals. One of those ideals -- so FDR, JFK, Reagan, Clinton and the rest told us -- was the ideal of liberty, the freedom to think and believe as we see fit. So how does it become anti- American to pursue an American ideal? Is it anti-American to exercise the right to believe that America, this time, is horribly wrong? Apparently so. Bush and his mouthpieces are making enemies, defining enemies, with every breath they take. The choice is theirs, and in time it will hurt their country badly. But when I think of the American people and the American places I have happened to know over the years I conclude that a great lie is being perpetrated. The US, in its origins and finest traditions, is not the nation Bush says it is. Most Americans, like most of us, just want to be left alone and allowed to get on with their lives. So who, denying them even that, clamouring for a dishonourable war, is truly anti-American? Web report: Iraq Copyright � 2002 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088 Back to previous page <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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