Pew Poll (via Glenn Greenwald):
Public opinion about the use of torture remains divided, though the share saying it can at least sometimes be justified has edged upward over the past year. Currently just over half of Americans say that the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can either often (19%) or sometimes (35%) be justified. This is the first time in over five years of Pew Research polling on this question that a majority has expressed these views. Another 16% say torture can rarely be justified, while 25% say it can never be justified.
See also: "Large number of Americans favor violent attacks against civilians"
Isn’t it true that every honest German is ashamed of his government these days? Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes - crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure - reach the light of day?
--White Rose Society, first leaflet
You know, there was once a time I believed that one could be an advocate of progressive policies and at the same consider themselves a patriot. America has its flaws, my thinking went, but with a progressive framework it would be allowed to live up to its true ideals. We've all told ourselves versions of this narrative at one point or another:
"MY America doesn't torture innocents detained without trial. MY America doesn't drop bombs on darker skinned nations without any legitimate claim to self-defense. MY America doesn't overthrow democracies, prop up dictatorships, and systematically smash the hopes and dreams of every oppressed and exploited group of humans on the planet."
Yes, there's a grain of truth to this thinking. This certainly is not "your" America. However, "this" America is the only America that has ever existed. America has never been "yours" and it never will be.
This poll, you must realize by now, was inevitable. America couldn't keep going around the world on its murderous rampages and depend on the ignorance and stupidity of its own population to keep those pesky moral issues at bay. Its leaders couldn't possibly continue to violate the values they claim to be upholding without at least some of its people noticing. It is no longer enough to engage in denial of American atrocities or to write them off as the mere excesses of its underlings. We have made it to the point where we are accepting them, rationalizing them, and even glorifying them. We have now passed the breaking point. Before, it was necessary to engage in the same old twisted denials of committing war crimes or having selfish intentions. As of the present time, America has embraced evil rather openly. It should not be considered impolite or (gasp) uncivil to say so.
I mean, far be it for me to question the intrinsic moral goodness of a nation that not so long ago intentionally inflicted mass suffering on the civilian population of an entire country as punishment for being ruled by the same dictator we armed and funded only a couple of years earlier. And that's just a description of the "good war" we put that country through. You don't even want to know about the humanitarian consequences of the "bad war."
Americans have had enough opportunities to realize the full implications of their government's bullying. They could have come to the understanding that as long as they keep electing the same warmongers and imperialists to office they will forever gain antagonism of the rest of the world, particularly those who are on the bottom of the US-imposed global order and especially those directly bombed and attacked by the US military and its various proxies. It would not have been hard to see the world through the eyes of the Palestinian child who lacked the clean water necessary to live a decent life because Israel preferred that it be used to fill the swimming pools of already generously subsidized settlers. Or a sick Iraqi dying from some treatable disease because his doctors cannot import the drugs and equipment necessary to cure him through the nightmarish sanctions regime imposed on his country by the US and UN. Or an imprisoned Egyptian dissident who can't speak his mind because his country's authoritarian government is deemed to be of great geopolitical significance to the US. But that's pansy stuff. Blame America First stuff. Americans are a tough people. They are born with a stubborn sense of Churchillian resolve. So they did the only other thing they could have done: take off the gloves of restraint. Even the ones that were mostly superficial.
In the near-decade since 9/11 happened, Americans watched as their government unilaterally invaded the same country they had been tormenting the past decade through sanctions and frequent bombings. They were all for it, until our own people started coming home in boxes and most of the stated objectives of the war were seen as an impossibility. The war also caused massive damage to America's image and prestige, which is never a good thing for any empire. The images of prisoner abuse and torture that leaked from Abu Ghraib gave Americans a final chance to potentially reclaim their humanity. They could have responded with a committed campaign to end and abolish all torture in their name. Instead, they re-elected the president who directly authorized the torture. Of course, it is arguable that this would have made a difference anyway. As Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein have already pointed out: America has always tortured. Bush was only unprecedented in his direct utilization of US agents and personnel for the job and the relative brazenness with which it was publicly defended and promoted.
This is what America does. This is what America is. There's no changing that.
About a week after 9/11, in an interview with a Belgrade radio station, Noam Chomsky proclaimed with some confidence that "if the American population had the slightest idea of what is being done in their name, they would be utterly appalled." I am afraid that Chomsky may have been terribly wrong on this one. He would most certainly be wrong if he said the same thing today. For the past eight years Americans have had the unique opportunity to be exposed to the overseas carnage and consequences of the policies enacted by the leaders they elected to represent them. They can no longer plead ignorance about the aggression and cruelty that they enable. Also, despite the 2008 election, very little has changed concerning the way Americans view their country and its place in the world in both positive and normative manners. This poll on torture is perhaps the most convincing piece of evidence I've seen to make the case that Americans are actually losing their humanity as time goes on. The hysteria of post-9/11 ultra-nationalism, far from fading away, has taken a more subtle form. The election of Obama, aside from changing very little in terms of concrete foreign policy positions, will most likely go down in history as a brief intermission before America begins its final descent into the realm of moral depravity.
And what should be said about Obama? A man who misses no opportunity to condemn Bush for the same policies he now presides over. Human rights groups and the UN are still denied access to detainees at Gitmo, rendition is set to continue as it did under Bush (and Clinton), and victims of abuse and torture are still denied any type of legal recourse, as well as any kind of apology, from our government. It is amusing to note that the American right first gave Obama "credit" for continuing Bush's detention policies and used the occasion the proclaim that the civil libertarians were wrong all along. Today they are back in full fear-mongering mode, accusing the Obama administration of aiding terrorists for the smallest and most inconsequential reforms imaginable.
The American right has pushed back hard against the smallest concessions Obama has made with accusations of treason and betrayal ranging from barely subtle to outright Dolchstoß. They may very well get back into office due to the irrational idea that Obama is serious about being a fair broker in world affairs. Because of their certainty in American righteousness, they view any restraint on American power as a hindrance to its rightful place. The American people seem to agree with them more and more, because they honestly cannot stand the sight of their president apologizing for previous crimes committed by their beloved empire. The backlash from Obama's supposed "appeasement" strategy seems to be turning Americans into even more vengeful people than they were directly after 9/11. As we can see from the Pew Poll that inspired this diary, things don't look too good for the cause of human decency. However, perhaps there is something that can be learned from all this.
Ever since its founding by rich slave-owners and expansionist settlers, America has pursued its own interests just as any other state has. It was unique at the time for being founded upon a doctrine that emphasized freedom and the rights of man. However it also felt that it had the right, or perhaps the duty, to violate these enlightenment values as it felt fit. It has exploited its founding values to the fullest degree, giving its citizens a sense of moral righteousness. It's hard to feel guilty about aggression against foreigners or foreign states when one is certain that their own country and/or civilization is superior to the "Other" in terms of morality. America has always been skillful at terming its own international outlook as far more complex than "might makes right." Whether it's the glory of God's will, Western civilization, or humanitarianism, America has never had a shortage of faux-idealism to explain away its wars and constant meddling in the service of its own interests. When America violates religious concepts of "just war," liberal Western values, or humanitarian law in the course of carrying out its "mission," the irony is far less apparent to most people than it should be. Now that Americans are finally getting word of the outright barbarism done in their name, they seem less and less bothered by it. Some of them even seem to relish in it.
The very essence of America seems to be dispossession and aggression in the name of freedom and progress. From the very outset America was built up in large part by slave labor and stolen land. From then on America expanded its Western frontier through the further theft of land from indigenous peoples and even took a large chunk of the sovereign nation of Mexico for itself. After its borders reached the West coast, it took up foreign imperialism with the stated purpose of seeking new markets and sources of raw materials. As the great historian of US foreign affairs William Appleman Williams documented, this was justified through appeals to American "greatness" and the economic potential contained in societies that were "closed" to the influence of foreign trade, finance, and investment. The "Open Door" policy, which began with China but was later applied to the rest of the world, became a means of creating a world safe for US business interests. The policy was unlike the traditional settler-colonialism of the great European powers since it did not seek to capture more land for inhabiting. It also did not give de jure preferences to American businessmen as a mercantile based power would be expected to. But it certainly did give special privilege to the claims of all foreign capitalists against those native to the lands being colonized. This unique claim to "neutrality" gave America a sense of legitimacy as a major world power in the early 20th century community of nations. However, it was only after problems associated with nationalism and inter-imperial rivalry were fully exposed in the two massive World Wars that America became a superpower.
In his encyclopedic work on US imperialism since 1945, Killing Hope, William Blum wrote that:
"[American leaders] are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care ... the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them ... then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home-the ones who make it back alive-with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things."
The American people, on the other hand, are going even farther. They are starting to embrace the immoral acts done in their name as if they were deeds to be proud of. Think of all the conservative gloating over the Iraq War and their allegations of moral "relativism" aimed at the left. To them invading Iraq wasn't just morally acceptable, it was a moral necessity. To attack a country that could never realistically pose a threat to us, despite all the warnings of regional instability, was our duty as Americans. Whether the exact rationale was WMDs, alleged support for terrorism, or the liberation of the Iraqi people the argument was always constructed in order to appeal to what is termed (in the most Orwellian way possible) "moral clarity." Of course it is apparent to us that engaging in behavior which would be (correctly) condemned as belligerent and unjustified by our own government if taken by our rivals or enemies is the worst kind of relativism.
While the right dabbles in the glorification of institutionalized sadism and crimes against humanity, liberals and leftists still seek to define "their" America and speculate on what it would look like. They seek a "progressive, but strong" America, even if it means sacrificing the cause of peace and justice on a global scale. The Vietnam War, we should remember, was escalated by the same solid liberal Democrat who launched the Great Society. While part of this was about appeasing the right-wing Cold Warriors of the time, a great deal of it can be attributed to progressives buying into the notion of America as a benevolent superpower. Many who consider themselves anti-war fall into often fall into this trap as well. "Good" war opponents, we are told, never question the moral authority of the US or its supposed good intentions. "Good" war opponents always maintain their patriotism even when it is questioned by pro-war blowhards. "Good" war opponents must never even think of questioning the value of patriotism itself.
Today the Vietnam War is looked upon as a strategic blunder and not a moral travesty. In the same sense, the 1973 CIA-orchestrated coup in Chile is an "excess" or "anomaly," as if the US never had a formal habit of overthrowing and attempting to overthrow governments (both elected and unelected) that it found to be unfriendly to its interests. When opponents of American atrocity argue in practical or reformist terms they rarely realize that they are allowing the apologists for imperialism to frame the debate. By accepting the axiom that the US always always has good intentions that war crimes are acceptable if they help to accomplish self-serving-objectives, we deny ourselves the most potent appeal one can make: the appeal to one's own conscience. How are people supposed to be convinced to oppose US imperialism if we do not first get them the question the idea of American benevolence? How can we argue against imperial tactics that may be effective at establishing a US-favored balance of power if we do not challenge the notion that the US has the right to impose anything on the rest of the world?
Asking if the Afghan War is worth the increasingly large amounts of civilian deaths is not even considered from any side in the increasingly narrow spectrum of debate. When the issue of civilian deaths are brought up, it is always within the context of the effect it will have on us and how it will effect our image around the world. The lives of Afghan civilians have no intrinsic value. They could be a source of bad PR--for sure--but at the end of the day they're just another group of impoverished foreigners whose names we can barely pronounce.
America has always been a contradiction in terms. It always stands for freedom and liberty, except when it doesn't. It always supports self-determination and popular will, except when it doesn't. It is pointless to talk about the high ideals America was founded upon without talking about how often it has stood in the way of recognizing these ideals all around the world. One can't help but be reminded of Gandhi's response when asked what he thought of Western civilization: "I think it would be a good idea." If America cannot even be expected to follow the rules it has set for other nations to follow, then what is it worth exactly?
I often hear that America can be made better, it can be forced to live up to its true ideals. Of course any genuine improvement would be welcome, but all I have seen so far is a grand PR effort. The US in recent years has tried to paint a happy face on its place in the world. The changes proposed never seek to disturb the balance that allows America to maintain its uncontested authority. Obama has arguably charted a different course in the world than Bush has, but it still largely serves the same interests. Even in Honduras, where the administration seemed to be sincerely in favor of restoring democracy at one point, things are looking grim with the administration now recognizing the results of an election conducted by the same military that has been shooting at, beating up, and raping members of the democratic opposition in the streets. Even more frightening is the fact that Obama, being a Democrat under constant attack from the right, will receive much less left-wing resistance to his imperial conquests than Bush or any Republican would have.
Godwin be damned, Americans are looking more and more like the Germans of the 1920s. The necessary evils of yesterday are the virtuous deeds of today. When US torture--something that has existed in less brazen forms before--can give a former Vice President bragging rights, we have to seriously consider the possibility that the American people have wholeheartedly embraced something I call Evil Americanism.
Evil Americanism sounds at first like a perversion of patriotism or an extreme form of nationalism. But it is simply Americanism taken to its logical conclusion. An integral feature of Americanism is the idea that America--the city upon a hill--is a nation so incredibly superior and advanced, yet at the same time so compassionate and humanitarian, that the rules for all other nations do not apply to it. It is the exception to the rule. This idea is also known as American exceptionalism. When applied to the modern world it means that America has the moral authority to violate numerous international and humanitarian laws, even ones that the US accuses its enemies of breaking. In the case of Iraq in 2003, some apologists for the invasion even had the chutzpah to suggest that the US was the sole enforcer of international law since Saddam was blocking UN weapons inspectors (itself a specious claim, but that's for another diary).
Evil Americanism is the highest form of Americanism. It claims that America and America alone is fit for world domination. America is therefore justified in completely disregarding most of, if not all, the norms of the international community as well as those norms considered by most decent humans to be the bedrock of a humane society. There are no limits to the utter depravity of its methods and the doublethink implicit in each of its proponents' arguments.
Evil Americanism takes the doublethink that has always been present in US foreign policy rhetoric and takes it to an extreme that has until now been mostly unheard of. Previously, Americans either denied their country's misdeeds or rationalized them as necessary evils in pursuit of higher goals. We are approaching the point where Americans openly acknowledge their atrocities and glorify them. Evil Americanism is, in summary, the outright denial of American evil. Barbarism in the name of civilization goes from being a practical necessity for national survival to being a moral necessity for the Glory of the Fatherland. The thinking behind realpolitik was that morality had no place in foreign policy. Evil Americanism rejects this view as soulless. But of course, its vision of "morality" could be more accurately described as chauvinism.
Think about every argument you've ever heard in defense of torture. You will recognize something very quickly: they contradict each other, constantly. Let us think of some random examples:
*We do not torture
*We use techniques that do not cross the threshold (defined by us) of severe mental distress and/or physical pain to be legally regarded as torture
*That said, we still reserve the right to cross even that narrowly defined threshold in the event that the president sees it fit for reasons of "necessity or self-defense"
*Torture is abhorrent and illegal under US law
*There is no treaty that tells us we cannot smash the testicles of a terror suspect's child
Because the superficial "logic" of the torture apologist is stripped down so easily it will be increasingly necessary for the American public to embrace evil as a guiding force. Indeed, it already isn't uncommon for people to justify torture for reasons that are essentially rooted in sadism. We often hear that the alleged 9/11 plotters "had it coming" because of the seriousness of the charges against them. Nevermind the fact that they haven't been convicted or even charged at the time of their torture. Nevermind the hundreds and possibly thousands of innocent men who passed through America's hands enduring all kinds of wanton abuse and mistreatment. All that matters to many Americans is that all of them were Muslims. Plus, they were found to be a sufficient threat by Our Troops and Our Leader, two parties whose rational judgement in matters of national security must never be questioned. Therefore, they must have had it coming.
If America itself is not questioned, then Evil Americanism is perhaps an inevitability. Americans are growing weary of denial and rationalization as a means of coping with their own complicity in imperial atrocities. They will feel the need to pervert their own morality if the very essence of America itself is seen as beyond criticism. They are fully willing to become evil if it is seen as the only way to maintain their grasp on reality. I do not want this to happen. If human decency is to be preserved then serious discussions of the morality of US imperialism should take place.
I honestly wish I did not feel the need to post this diary. I wish I could believe that America was something worth being proud of. It is simply not the case that I actually want to believe that my own country is living a lie. The feelings of alienation from the patriotic masses are not pleasant to withstand.
I hope that very few here are significantly offended by what I have to say. If you wish to disagree, then you may explain why in a respectful manner in the comments. I understand that the inflammatory nature of this diary's contents and title may evoke a strong emotional reaction from some, but please try and refrain from any types of knee-jerk dismissals and personal attacks that typifies most other internet debates on the subject.
Hopefully, I will have encouraged some deep thoughts on the subject from everyone including those who do not agree with me 100%.