America, Please Educate Me.
In my articles about how I feel living in America, and seeing, in my opinion, America’s weakness when confronted by mayhem, I have been graciously enlightened by several people willing to educate and not chastise. This alone raises my hopes that we can unite as a people. I’m indebted to those who write a different point of view. Thank you.
Division worldwide is as consistent today as it was 500 years ago. It is no better than it was after the image of the twin towers falling; the world’s nations are divided. What is it? Why? How does a world so divided on everything last without us blasting ourselves into eternity?
I came to America a year before 911. Then, I never thought I’d recover from a horrific scene. I became physically sickened from a typically European point of view, having watched the West strive to refashion the Middle East in our image without success.
President Bush appeared determined to make Iraq pay, even though, as I saw it, he had little proof that Hussain and Bin Laden were cohorts. Bush, however, resolved to make Iraq a test case for his new doctrine without any tangible evidence Iraq was to blame. Bush, however, did not lack for casus belli. First, Hussain had tried to assassinate his father. Then there was the fault-filled argument that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction and managing to hide evidence from inspectors. Iraq was added to the “axis of evil” as a result.
With so little evidence of WMDs, why did Americans overwhelmingly support the war against Iraq? There was no evidence that Iraq was involved in any way with 911. It seemed unbelievable that the American people, congress, and the senate approved massive force against Iraq.
It had not been the same a decade earlier, to which there was strenuous public opposition, and congress narrowly supported the Persian Gulf War after Iraq invaded Kuwait. So if the allies were with the United States in 1991, why would they balk at joining Bush for round two?
Did we learn nothing when Russia supplied a grievous blow to Bush’s efforts to build a European and Mid East alliance? Kuwait and Saudi Arabia allowed their deserts to become staging grounds for American forces but neither committed troops to fight Saddam Hussain. Other European allies showed a lack of interest in Bush’s plan? France and Germany distanced themselves while America continued to fight a losing war in Afghanistan, both countries preferring to take a non-confrontational approach.
At the time, Bush’s support for Israel and Sharon, who became premier in 2001, waited for over a year, during which Sharon strengthened relations with Bush. Sharon then sent Israeli forces to kill hundreds of members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Martyrs Brigade. Subsequently, Bush took the approach that Israel had the right to defend itself and blocked the UN Security Council resolutions to intervene.
Western Europeans were furious. However, America favored a Jewish State, including Evangelicals. From the West’s point of view, it compared Bush and Sharon to Hitler.
America does not know how to handle the Middle East. Our greed personifies this for oil consumption, the distaste for high gas prices, not caring about the price of a latte. The movie industry portrays this confusion about good guys and bad guys in various ways. In the film, Munich Palestinian terrorists are literate, articulate, and even sympathetic, while in the movie United 93, they are unexceptionally murderous.
Then we had the movie Syriana, bad Arabs, suicide bombers, but ultimately the film blames oil companies and the CIA. Finally, post 911, Hollywood produces Hidalgo, a pony express rider finding a fresh frontier in the oasis and dunes of Arabia. The myth of the American West all but disappeared.
What after Ukraine?
Is there good or bad in Putin’s desire to take back the USSR. The United States shows no willingness to fight. If all Ukraine falls, what then? I feel disorientated here in America. Adrift, even.
We’ve watched voraciously Ukrainian cities demolished, burying tens of thousands of civilians. How can a Ukrainian resident returning to the ruins of their once home know where they are if there are no street signs? I’m standing in a hall of mirrors; no one looks the same; ordinary crooks appear as the monsters a country will get behind.
Do Russian people doubtless know nothing of why their children are fighting America? They certainly don’t believe they are fighting relatives in Ukraine.
What is the hold-up, America? These difficulties need to be sharpened and resolved. Are we victims of our tangible economic interests? Aren’t we the homeland of Freedom?
Yes, we have an alliance, but each partnership has different perspectives and different economic options. We have the power. Doesn’t so much power come with responsibilities? Do we take a stance of neutrality? Isn’t an invasion of Ukraine on a par with the falling of the twin towers? We are tested and pushed with a strategy that we and our allies will come into conflict. Will one dead America in Ukraine change the whole dynamic?
There is a theater going on in Ukraine. Are we a player or set builders? An advocate for Ukraine’s development or a bystander watching a country absorbed into Soviet communism.
American restraint has returned after the collapse of the towers.
There will be no new world order. Instead, powerful countries will take less powerful ones, and so goes the breakdown of what alliances should bring about.
We have encouraged Putin; he sees the impotence of the American alliance.
