Last Straw

Kirk Mac­Gib­bon, a New Zeal­ander liv­ing in New York, says that Kiwi’s are pre­ju­dice against Amer­ic­ans and that this comes from, amongst other things, “their lim­ited under­stand­ing of Amer­ican for­eign policy.”

But we’re not the only ones to lack under­stand­ing. Much of the world mis­un­der­stands U.S. for­eign policy, espe­cially those who have to deal with it at the end of a gun bar­rel. Ordin­ary people just don’t seem to get that the U.S. meddles in and des­troys their lives for their own good.

While the self-appointed World Ideo­logy Police “fight ter­ror­ism,” or “rid the world of weapons of mass destruc­tion” or, my per­sonal favour­ite, “spread demo­cracy and free­dom,” the world stands by and simply mis­un­der­stands, or even fights back.

Worse still, it actu­ally pre­sumes to dis­cuss such small incon­veni­ences as:

• The gen­o­cide of the indi­gen­ous people of North America
• Mur­der­ous and cow­ardly bomb­ing cam­paigns, includ­ing the hun­dreds of thou­sands bombed in Viet­nam and Cam­bodia, and the hun­dreds of thou­sands fire bombed and nuc­lear bombed in Japan
• The long record of spon­sor­ing crimes against human­ity includ­ing regime changes that are against demo­cracy (Iran, Chile, Guatem­ala, Haiti, the list goes on) and the sup­port of dic­tat­ors who pro­tect U.S. private invest­ment at the expense of the pub­lic interest in their own coun­tries (aka pred­at­ory capitalism)
• Hos­til­ity towards and repres­sion of altern­at­ive mod­els of devel­op­ment that might chal­lenge the “Wash­ing­ton Con­sensus” (again, a long list, see books below)
• The reserving for itself alone the right to wage per­man­ent war on the world and jus­tify it under a doc­trine of “anti­cip­at­ory self-defense” or pre­vent­ive war.
• The reas­ser­tion of imper­ial power and the viti­ation of inter­na­tional law.
• The encour­age­ment given to other coun­tries to develop nuc­lear weapons and ter­ror­ist net­works as a deter­ent to U.S. aggression
• The use of Depleted Uranium tipped muni­tions, cluster bombs, fire bombs (aka Nap­alm) and now the pro­spect of new nuc­lear weapons
• Tor­ture
• And oil (pre­sum­ably we’re meant to believe the U.S. would have invaded Iraq had their eco­nomy been based on cab­bage and potatoes)

And then the U.S. pro­duces Pres­id­ents with atti­tudes like this:

I will never apo­lo­gise for the United States of Amer­ica, ever. I don’t care what it has done. I don’t care what the facts are.
—George WH Bush, New­s­week, 15 August, 1988

This was in regard to the shoot­ing down of an Ira­nian civil­ian air­liner on 3 July, 1988 by the USS Vincennes. All 290 civil­ian people in the air­craft were killed. The plane was on a routine flight in a com­mer­cial cor­ridor in Ira­nian airspace.

But you see, it’s all because:

The United States is good.
We try to do our best every­where.
—Madeleine Albright, The Wash­ing­ton Post, 23 Octo­ber, 1999

Prob­lem is the facts speak for them­selves, or some­times even those in power do:

In 1996, Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. Sec­ret­ary of State (i.e. head of for­eign affairs), was asked by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes what she felt about the fact that half a mil­lion Iraqi chil­dren had died as a res­ult of U.S.-led eco­nomic sanc­tions. Albright replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”

The fol­low­ing quote from a U.S. stra­tegic plan­ner in 1948 sums things up pretty well (para­phrased ruthlessly):

We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 of its pop­u­la­tion … In this situ­ation … our real task in the com­ing period … is to main­tain this pos­i­tion of dis­par­ity.
—George F. Ken­nan, 28 Feb­ru­ary, 1948

Per­haps if Mr Mac­Gib­bon spent less time hanging out in New York eat­er­ies watch­ing Faux News and listen­ing to those who hold the gun or stuff their faces while oth­ers do and instead trav­elled the world to talk to those at the end of the gun bar­rel he might come to a bet­ter mis­un­der­stand­ing of U.S. for­eign policy like the rest of us.

Recom­men­ded reading:

• Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
• Rogue State: A Guide To The World’s Only Superpower
• On the Justice of Roost­ing Chick­ens: Reflec­tions on the Con­sequences of U.S. Imper­ial Arrog­ance and Criminality