Wars and Empire | Page 2

on Foreign Relations - largely supported Pew's findings.
The most startling and unambiguous revelation was the extent of
anti-American groundswell everywhere: among America's NATO allies,
in developing countries, Muslim nations and even in eastern Europe

where Americans, only a decade ago, were lionized as much-adulated
liberators.
"People around the world embrace things American and, at the same
time, decry U.S. influence on their societies. Similarly, pluralities in
most of the nations surveyed complain about American unilateralism."-
expounds the Pew report.
Yet, even this "embrace of things American" is ambiguous.
Violently "independent", inanely litigious and quarrelsome,
solipsistically provincial, and fatuously ignorant - this nation of video
clips and sound bites, the United States, is often perceived as trying to
impose its narcissistic pseudo-culture upon a world exhausted by wars
hot and cold and corrupted by vacuous materialism.
Recent accounting scandals, crumbling markets, political scams,
technological setbacks, and rising social tensions have revealed how
rotten and inherently contradictory the US edifice is and how
concerned are Americans with appearances rather than substance.
To religious fundamentalists, America is the Great Satan, a latter-day
Sodom and Gomorrah, a cesspool of immorality and spiritual decay. To
many European liberals, the United states is a throwback to darker ages
of religious zealotry, pernicious bigotry, virulent nationalism, and the
capricious misrule of the mighty.
According to most recent surveys by Gallup, MORI, the Council for
Secular Humanism, the US Census Bureau, and others - the vast
majority of Americans are chauvinistic, moralizing, bible-thumping,
cantankerous, and trigger-happy. About half of them believe that Satan
exists - not as a metaphor, but physically.
America has a record defense spending per head, a vertiginous rate of
incarceration, among the highest numbers of legal executions and
gun-related deaths. It is still engaged in atavistic debates about abortion,
the role of religion, and whether to teach the theory of evolution.
According to a series of special feature articles in The Economist,
America is generally well-liked in Europe, but less so than before. It is
utterly detested by the Moslem street, even in "progressive" Arab
countries, such as Egypt and Jordan. Everyone - Europeans and Arabs,
Asians and Africans - thinks that "the spread of American ideas and
customs is a bad thing".
Admittedly, we typically devalue most that which we have formerly

idealized and idolized.
To the liberal-minded, the United States of America reified the most
noble, lofty, and worthy values, ideals, and causes. It was a dream in
the throes of becoming, a vision of liberty, peace, justice, prosperity,
and progress. Its system, though far from flawless, was considered
superior - both morally and functionally - to any ever conceived by
Man.
Such unrealistic expectations inevitably and invariably lead to
disenchantment, disillusionment, bitter disappointment, seething anger,
and a sense of humiliation for having been thus deluded, or, rather,
self-deceived. This backlash is further exacerbated by the haughty
hectoring of the ubiquitous American missionaries of the
"free-market-cum-democracy" church.
Americans everywhere aggressively preach the superior virtues of their
homeland. Edward K. Thompson, managing editor of "Life"
(1949-1961) warned against this propensity to feign omniscience and
omnipotence: "Life (the magazine) must be curious, alert, erudite and
moral, but it must achieve this without being holier-than-thou, a cynic,
a know-it-all, or a Peeping Tom."
Thus, America's foreign policy - i.e., its presence and actions abroad -
is, by far, its foremost vulnerability.
According to the Pew study, the image of the Unites States as a benign
world power slipped dramatically in the space of two years in Slovakia
(down 14 percent), in Poland (-7), in the Czech Republic (-6) and even
in fervently pro-Western Bulgaria (-4 percent). It rose exponentially in
Ukraine (up 10 percent) and, most astoundingly, in Russia (+24 percent)
- but from a very low base.
The crux may be that the USA maintains one set of sanctimonious
standards at home while egregiously and nonchalantly flouting them far
and wide. Hence the fervid demonstrations against its military presence
in places as disparate as South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Saudi
Arabia.
In January 2000, Staff Sergeant Frank J. Ronghi sexually molested,
forcibly sodomized ("indecent acts with a child") and then murdered an
11-years old girl in the basement of her drab building in Kosovo, when
her father went to market to do some shopping.
His is by no means the most atrocious link in a long chain of brutalities

inflicted by American soldiers overseas. In all these cases, the
perpetrators were removed from the scene to face justice - or, more
often, a travesty thereof - back home.
Americans - officials, scholars, peacemakers, non-government
organizations - maintain a colonial state of mind. Backward natives
come cheap, their lives dispensable, their systems of governance and
economies inherently inferior. The white man's burden must not be
encumbered by the vagaries of primitive indigenous jurisprudence.
Hence America's fierce