IP: from Boston Glove: "America's arrogance of power"

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 11:18:05 -0400
To: dave () farber net
From: Paul Foldes <pfoldes () interhelp com>
Subject: from Boston Glove: "America's arrogance of power"


Dave, this might be of interest to members of IP list. From today's Boston 
Globe
Paul

At 09:50 AM 9/17/01 -0400, you wrote:
>This article appeared in today's Boston Globe.
>
>I pass it along as it represents a British outlook on
>recent events and may help us all reach a balanced picture
>of these [ugly] events.
>
>[fair use, Section 107(a), 1976 U.S. Copyright Act]
>
>America's arrogance of power
>
>By Jonathan Power, 9/17/2001
>
>AMERICA APPEARS not only immensely distressed and angry about the
>bombings but surprised too. It cannot understand why anyone should be
>moved by such hatred against it and, inured from the rest of us by the
>isolationism of most of its political representatives and its media,
>it has little idea of the currents swirling against it.
>
>An event of this magnitude was not only unimagined, it was
>unimaginable. Yet long before George Bush became president with his
>forceful in-your-face, take-it-or-leave-it attitude to the world
>outside on issues as diverse as global warming and anti-missile
>defenses, America has been turning in on itself, to the point of
>self-destructiveness.
>
>Columnist William Pfaff wrote recently that "America is a dangerous
>nation while remaining a righteous one" and America's pre-eminent
>foreign policy observer, George Kennan, ambassador to the Soviet Union
>during Stalin's time, wrote quite a few years ago: "I do not think
>that the United States civilization of these last 40-50 years is a
>successful civilization. I think this country is destined to succumb
>to failures which cannot be other than tragic and enormous in their
>scope." And later added that for Americans "to see ourselves as the
>center of political enlightenment and teachers to a great part of the
>rest of the world [is] unthought-through, vain, glorious and
>undesirable."
>
>It would be misunderstanding human nature to believe that most
>Americans want to hear such thoughts played back to them on their day
>of grief, victims of an evil deed that compares with the worst of the
>blood-stained twentieth century. Yet they have to know that action
>produces reaction and not for nothing is anti-American resentment on
>the increase all over the world. In Europe there is some astonishment
>at the way the new American administration has ploughed ahead with its
>self-interested agenda as if no one else has a legitimate opinion or
>could perhaps view the same situation in a different light.
>
>Foreign observers do not miss the reports that come out of Pentagon
>think tanks of America's need to use this special moment after the
>defeat of European communism and the break up of the Soviet Union to
>make sure that America is militarily superior the world over, and that
>no one, not even its closest allies, should be in a position to tell
>it what to do.
>
>The Bush administration, with its declared ambition to abandon the
>Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, seems unconcerned that this will set in
>motion events that will unwind hard won international norms on ending
>nuclear testing and on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
>
>Many Europeans say that America has got itself into this hole by its
>own disregard for what others think.
>
>The first law of holes, of course, is to stop digging - which, of
>course, is what Washington should firmly have told Israel six
>presidents ago when it started its foolish and counterproductive
>policy of building settlements on what everyone knew was Palestinian
>land. Amazingly, the policy continues with apparent understanding from
>the Bush administration. While Arab governments ring their hands, and
>young Palestinians fight one of the best trained armies in the world
>with stones, there are the inevitable few attached to the Palestinian
>cause who are moved toward serious violence.
>
>In every political movement - whether it be the Palestinians or the
>globalization protestors in Genoa - there are fringe elements that
>advocate violence. This does not mean the mainstream of that movement
>is wrong. It might or might not be. But, right or wrong, there will
>always be powerful elements of truth contained within it, or the
>passions and purpose would never be ignited.
>
>To meet it eye for eye and tooth for tooth, as Gandhi once said, is to
>make everybody blind.
>
>America right now is a repository of exhausted ideas, like dead stars.
>The arrogance of power has produced its inevitable reaction.
>
>America is threatened not by nuclear tipped missiles from unknown
>rogue nations, but by small groups of angry men who, although
>prisoners of their zealotry, know well enough that much of the world
>whilst not agreeing with them understands their frustration. To deal
>with this effectively requires a new way of looking at the world.
>
>George Kennan, the late Senator William Fulbright, Willam Pfaff and
>others have been arguing what this might be for a long time. On this
>sad and tragic day one wishes their pens could become mightier than
>America's sword.
>
>Jonathan Power is a columnist based in London.
>
>This story ran on page 19 of the Boston Globe on 9/17/2001. c
>Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
>--






For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/