The goodwill America earned on 9/11 was illusory

[igloo]

E S S A Y

To Hell With Sympathy

The goodwill America earned on 9/11 was illusory. Get over it

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

Monday, Nov. 17, 2003

No one likes us. And the democrats know why: the world loved us just two years ago, and then this President, cowboy arrogant and rudely unilateral, blew it. "When America was savagely attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists on 9-11, virtually all the world was with us," writes Democratic elder statesman Theodore Sorensen. "But that moment of universal goodwill was squandered." He writes that in the current issue of The American Prospect, but he is speaking for just about every Democratic candidate, potentate, deep thinker and critic, and not a few foreign commentators as well. The formulation is near universal: "The president has somehow squandered the international outpouring of sympathy, goodwill and solidarity that followed the attacks of Sept. 11" (Al Gore). "He has squandered the goodwill of the world after Sept. 11" (John Kerry).

The ur-text for this myth is the famous Le Monde editorial of Sept. 12, 2001, titled "We Are All Americans." But as Johns Hopkins professor Fouad Ajami points out, not only did that very editorial speak of America's paying for its cynicism, but also, within months, that same Le Monde publisher was back with a small book ("All Americans? The World After September 11, 2001"--note the question mark) filled with the usual belligerence toward and disapproval of America.

What happened in those intervening few months? Is not the core Democratic complaint that it was overreaching in Iraq that caused the world to turn against us? And yet barely had we buried our 9/11 dead — long before we entered Baghdad — when the French, and the rest of the world, decided that they were not really Americans after all and were back to vilifying American arrogance, unilateralism, hegemony and so on.

It is pure fiction that this pro-American sentiment was either squandered after Sept. 11 or lost under the Bush Administration. It never existed. Envy for America, resentment of our power, hatred of our success has been a staple for decades, but most particularly since victory in the cold war left us the only superpower.

Bill Clinton was the most accommodating, sensitive, multilateralist President one can imagine, and yet we know that al-Qaeda began the planning for Sept. 11 precisely during his presidency. Clinton made humility his vocation, apologizing variously for African slavery, for internment of Japanese Americans, for not saving Rwanda. He even decided that Britain should return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. A lot of good that did us. Bin Laden issued his Declaration of War on America in 1996--at the height of the Clinton Administration's hyperapologetic, good-citizen internationalism.

Moreover, it is unseemly, even pathetic, for the would-be leaders of a great power to pine for the pity gleaned on the day America lay bleeding and wounded. This is to carry into foreign policy a pathology of our domestic politics — the glorification of victimhood and the lust for its privileges, such as they are. It is not surprising that having set up at home a spoils system that encourages every ethnic group to claim even greater victimization than the next, the Democrats should lament the fact that we did not seize and institutionalize our collective victimhood of Sept. 11.

The world apparently likes the U.S. when it is on its knees. From that the Democrats deduce a foreign policy — remain on our knees, humble and supplicant, and enjoy the applause and "support" of the world.

This is not just degrading. It is a fool's bargain--3,000 dead for a day's worth of nice words and a few empty U.N. resolutions. The Democrats would forfeit American freedom of action and initiative in order to get back — what? Another nice French editorial? To be retracted as soon as the U.S. stops playing victim?

Sympathy is fine. But if we "squander" it when we go to war to avenge our dead and prevent the next crop of dead, then to hell with sympathy. The fact is that the world hates us for our wealth, our success, our power. They hate us into incoherence. The Europeans, Ajami astutely observes, disdain us for our excessive religiosity (manifest, they imagine, by evolution being expelled from schools while prayer is ushered back in)--while the Arab world despises us as purveyors of secularism. We cannot win for losing. We are widely reviled as enemies of Islam, yet in the 1990s we engaged three times in combat — in the Persian Gulf and in the Balkans — to rescue Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo, Muslim peoples all. And in the last two cases, there was nothing in it for the U.S.; it was humanitarianism and good international citizenship of the highest order.

The search for logic in anti-Americanism is fruitless. It is in the air the world breathes. Its roots are envy and self-loathing — by peoples who, yearning for modernity but having failed at it, find their one satisfaction in despising modernity's great exemplar.

On Sept. 11, they gave it a rest for a day. Big deal.

From the Nov. 17, 2003 issue of TIME magazine

[marksimons]

heheh...

clinton's administration still let american coporations fuck over a huge part of the world...

you guys just don't get this...

and anti-americanism.

it's more complicated than this.

we don't hate america or what it stands for.

we hate that your leaders say one thing, do another, and fuck over a lot of people.

as I've said before, we in europe have seen this before, america is basically running an empire, whether you admit this to yourself or not.

granted us lilly livered europeans do want the best of both worlds, american intervention when needed yet we get edgy when america does stuff like iraq. but with good reason.

we know how divided america is, how millions of people without insurance, the hundreds of thousands in prison for spurious reasons - between the ages of 21 and 30, one in three black males in america is in prison. more black males are in prison than college. we know who runs america, we know the difference between the way you americans see your actions, the way the rest of the world experiences american power, and there is a huge difference.

you can't just say FUCK OFF to the rest of the world.

it doesn't work like that.

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by marksimons

heheh...

clinton's administration still let american coporations fuck over a huge part of the world...

you guys just don't get this...

and anti-americanism.

it's more complicated than this.

we don't hate america or what it stands for.

we hate that your leaders say one thing, do another, and fuck over a lot of people.

as I've said before, we in europe have seen this before, america is basically running an empire, whether you admit this to yourself or not.

granted us lilly livered europeans do want the best of both worlds, american intervention when needed yet we get edgy when america does stuff like iraq. but with good reason.

we know how divided america is, how millions of people without insurance, the hundreds of thousands in prison for spurious reasons - between the ages of 21 and 30, one in three black males in america is in prison. more black males are in prison than college. we know who runs america, we know the difference between the way you americans see your actions, the way the rest of the world experiences american power, and there is a huge difference.

you can't just say FUCK OFF to the rest of the world.

it doesn't work like that.

Why should we trust Europeans with our OWN national security?

Wouldn't the majority of the world praise and rejoice another terrorsit attack against us? You will NEVER know what it is being an american unless some psycopath destroys Big Ben or crashes a plane into Buckingham palce, then maybe you will see the world the way we see it... Until then .......

WITH US OR AGAINST US...

enough said...

[mrmatas2277]

Originally posted by marksimons

the hundreds of thousands in prison for spurious reasons - between the ages of 21 and 30, one in three black males in america is in prison. more black males are in prison than college. we know who runs america, we know the difference between the way you americans see your actions, the way the rest of the world experiences american power, and there is a huge difference

do u know WHY those figures are like that?

[marksimons]

the drug laws, americas racist past, a number of reasons really.

with us or against us.

if we're against you, even passively, what are you going to do? bomb us? nuke us? send us to camps?

with us or against us.

that statement, it simplifies sooo much and is devisive and just plain stupid.

I'm gonna do some nosing around and find some laws from Nazi germany...

[cintron]

American goodwill ---------> pissed away by our cowboy president.

can't argue that there are more people pissed off at us now than there were before bush entered the corral, er i mean white saloon, er i mean oval hoosegow.

anyways...

he's stepped on a lot of toes to get his way. i dont disagree with everything he's done but i dont agree with it all either...

all i know is after 9/11 we had people all over the world lighting candles and laying flowers at the gates of american embassies.

now those same people are holding signs and throwing bottles.

[jamiroguy1]

Originally posted by marksimons

...you can't just say FUCK OFF to the rest of the world.

it doesn't work like that...

I concur.

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by mrmatas2277

do u know WHY those figures are like that?

I was having this argument with a co-worker the other day and my conservative side really came through on this subject. I beleive that every person is in charge of their own self and even though at times social and economic surroundings can be difficult, success can still be acheived. In our society it isn't un common to see a poerson come from poverty and become a self made millionare why? It's because that person had a goal and worked hard util he acheived it.

Mark your statements are border line racist for assuming that racism is so rapant that it prevents afro-americans from exceling in our country and I will be the first to tell you that you're completly wrong... Look at the Sec of Stae Colin Powell for example, an african-american, the CEO's of Morgan Stanley and AOL both giants in their industry and both headed by african americans..

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by marksimons

[bwith us or against us.

that statement, it simplifies sooo much and is devisive and just plain stupid.

I'm gonna do some nosing around and find some laws from Nazi germany...

Against terrorism....

[marksimons]

hmmm yes.

but.

it's not that simple.

look at colin powel, forget about the others...

mmmyeeaaah I don't buy it, also, lest us not forget that the Army is one of the most racially equal organisations in america, purely because of its emphasis on merit.

operation keep darky down...

ahem...

the thing is America, in certain states, did want to keep openly racist policies, and had people to defend them, and this isn't decades ago, this is our parents generation.

the problem with drugs is many, and to blame the individual is often to take responsiblity away from society, legislators, the police.

Reagans 'War on Drugs' do you know much about it? how the US military aid to south american countries does a lot to contribute to the political and social instabilities of countries like Colombia.

the situation in a lot of urban ghettos was really bad, and is still quite bad.

the problem is that drugs are seen as a crime and a problem.

if you are in an inner city urban area where the schools are crap, the jobs dead end and the money from drugs damn good, what do you think you will choose.

then if you get busted once when you're young, your employment hopes sink even more and the law and society seem to be against you, where is that going to push you?

the numbers of people in prison in america for dealing weed is crazy, stupidly high.

now, if I said I want to lock up everyone who drinks beer because it's dangerous and its effects on society are bad and it leads to alcholism, you'd think I was mad.

but if I say I want to lock up people for dealing weed because it's bad and it leads to harder drugs, then you get a rep for being tough on crime...

generalistations for sure, and some states are better than others, but this is part of the problem.

america's racist past is something that needs to be addressed more, okay it's not every american, but the country was founded on genocide, built on the backs of slavery and the policies of vietnam, slightly genocidal racist there, plus the numbers of racist people in society is numerous, the equality in america between the races is not as high as you may imagine...

oh and I'm not saying that blacks can't succeed in America, but there are still a lot of things holding some back, again, I'd draw your attention to the tens of thousands of able bodied, smart black men who have been failed by the system and now languish inside prison. not the relatively small numbers of successful black politicians - name me some senators and reps besides Condi and Colin Powel please - and those CEOs who do not represent the majority of black people in America.

america isn't as bad as it has been, but not as good as it could be.

[mrmatas2277]

Originally posted by marksimons

the drug laws, americas racist past, a number of reasons really

some yes...some no...depends on the individual and the environment they are in...if they live in the ghetto (ie blacks/hispanics) they prob. will end up in jail or not going to college or obtaining a high shool diploma...but the same goes for whites...its all subjective...btw i agree with a certain drug law that should be done away with, but i doubt i will see it in my lifetime...

[marksimons]

and why not?

you live in the biggest best democracy in the world...

some states are already voting for it on medical, Canada has it on medical, the UK will probably legalise in about 5 years time.

it can be done.

it should be done, america needs to take a lead.

oh.

and watch City of God to see how guns and drug laws fuck over people in ghettos the world over...

[mrmatas2277]

Originally posted by marksimons

name me some senators and reps besides Condi and Colin Powel please - and those CEOs who do not represent the majority of black people in America.

i think what he is trying to say...that some of them started in the same situation and same atmosphere as the people u just described and the other half (albeit a small one) made it...why is that?

[seximofo2k]

Originally posted by mr mahs

I was having this argument with a co-worker the other day and my conservative side really came through on this subject. I beleive that every person is in charge of their own self and even though at times social and economic surroundings can be difficult, success can still be acheived. In our society it isn't un common to see a poerson come from poverty and become a self made millionare why? It's because that person had a goal and worked hard util he acheived it.

This is basically the core different between conservative and liberal thinking. I personally think that social and economic surroundings have more of an affect on people than you take into account. Social mobility is rare at best in this country. Yes their are exceptions to any rule and yes although your economic and social status makes it 100x more difficult it is still possible to elevate yourself in society but still the idea that you are poor because you. Us more privileged people take many things for granted.....

[mrmatas2277]

Originally posted by marksimons

some states are already voting for it on medical, Canada has it on medical, the UK will probably legalise in about 5 years time.

about 2 states have it legal for medical...but i dont see it being approved anywhere else anytime soon...i personally wish it would be least "de-criminalized"...a fine...the marijuana taken away and ur on ur merry way....again...i dont see this happening anytime soon...

[marksimons]

I was making a political point with regards to the representation of minorities in the american political system.

is this what we mean by representative democracy?

The United States is 59th in world rankings of representation by women. Only 14% of Members of Congress are women, and the number of female state legislators has declined since 1998

The U.S. Senate lacks a single African American or Latino member, and the number of African Americans and Asian Pacific Americans in the U.S. House has declined since 1994. People of color are under-represented in nearly every state legislature.

More than 4.5 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of felony disfranchisement laws that disproportionately impact low-income communities of color, including one out of every eight adult African American men.

More than half a million Americans in our nation's capital are denied voting representation in the U.S Congress despite the fact that they fulfill all of the same responsibilities of citizenship shared by Americans living in states and despite Congress having the final say over all local matters.

http://www.democracyusa.org/events/calltoaction.html