Those who point out that the US has often interfered in the affairs of other nations for very venal reasons which served the rich and powerful are not wrong. This has often happened.
In all human affairs, of course, motives are mixed, but it is quite right to say that pious rhetoric has often masked effectively villainous motives, and morally indefensible results.
So those who say “my country, right or wrong” would likely either find themselves defending really awful things, or feeling deep regret, if they knew or were told about the full extent of our activities everywhere.
We are not always right. We have never been always, 100% right. This is the truth.
But what is interesting that occurred to me just now is that our IDEALS truly are exceptional, and we have often asked that we be judged by them, and our CRITICS take the same mindset, the same emotional gestalt to simply invert a disingenuous narrative into ANOTHER disingenuous narrative that is equally wrong, equally blind, and equally indefensible.
America is always right becomes America is always wrong. It is the same spirit, the same jingoism, and same lack of critical attention and insight. It is the same latent tendency all Americans have, which is to be judged by intentions. All we see, often, are ideals and not dead smoking bodies, and starving children.
Apologists for the creed of American Exceptionalism, especially in its worst manifestations of Manifest Destiny and the civilizing influence of our way of life (even if we have tended to improve most of the nations we invaded, in many ways), have the other kind of apology to make. We were often at least in strong measure the bad guys. It is not hard to understand why Afghani tribesmen would resent us in their valleys and mountains. It is not hard to see why Iraqis would resent foreigners telling them what to do in their own nation. At best, we often advanced good causes obliquely, and often at considerable cost.
But the people who HATE America, and view us as the locus of much evil, ALSO have apologizing to do. As I’ve said for years, the catastrophe inflicted on South Vietnam when the American “Peace” movement caused us to flee a field of battle where we had ALREADY WON, and just needed to maintain the peace, was absolutely nauseating.
They get upset seeing Mexican kids in cages. How would they feel watching millions of families getting broken up at gunpoint, separated for life–parents who never see their children again, and husbands who never see their wives again–and everything they owned confiscated, after some 200,000 people (best guess) had been summarily executed for purely political reasons? That is vastly larger than Katyn, but nobody knows any of this.
Or Iraq/Syria: we had WON the first battle with Al Queda, after a lot of trouble, when Obama pulled our troops out, then FUNDED what became ISIS. All that conflict we caused, and those who supported Hillary and Obama should apologize for that.
We–America, as led by the anti-American faction of our political landscape–overthrew Muammar Khaddafi with no real plan, and that nation suffered years of conflict, killing tens of thousands. Again, Hillary in particular owes the world an apology.
Here is the thing: when you see things in black and white, when everybody is on one side or the other, you are an idiot. It is manifestly a feature of the Leftwing mindset that they describe everyone OTHER than them as thinking in black and white terms, and their own views as nuanced, mature, reasonable, and humanitarian, when none of this tends to be true.
All of us are prone to either/or thinking. It is hard-wired into us. We are tribal by nature.
But only discussion brings this out. Only TRUE openness, and not the farcical tyranny envisioned in George Soros’ Open Society, permits perception, regret, and correction.
It is precisely because the Left has committed and countenanced so many horrific crimes–our abandonment of South Vietnam was clearly a VASTLY larger crime than fighting alongside the South Vietnamese to repel a North Vietnamese invasion–that they are laser focused on their enemies, which is ordinary Americans.
No doubt many of the guys flying flags in their pickup trucks are naive. They are ignorant. But they are not claiming to be educated, most of them. The REAL damage comes from the people who are DO claim to be educated, who hold tenured positions at major universities, who are ALSO naive about the effects policies they supported and CONTINUE TO SUPPORT have had on actual human beings.
Even now, take the anti-law enforcement initiatives. If you get rid of law enforcement officers, you get less law enforcement. If you have less law enforcement, you get more CRIME. This is so obvious an average sixth grader could figure it out.
But most of them ARE NOT AFFECTED themselves. The hippies of the late 60’s and early 70’s PAID NO COST FOR OUR ABANDONMENT OF OUR SOUTH VIETNAMESE ALLIES. Like the ridiculous children they were, they congratulated themselves on their “victory”, in precisely the way that patriotic Americans might have congratulated themselves in, say, the first Gulf War, even though hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed, many in awful ways. Bombs kill in a thousand ways, but most remain unseen by anyone, except those affected. We killed women. We killed children. But “America, Fuck Yeah”.
What I am trying to do is strike a middle path, one open to reason, to discussion, to learning, to doing better. And what I will suggest is that “America, Fuck Yeah” is STILL arguably on much more solid ground than the “America, Fuck NO” crowd, and 100% so where the Vietnam War in particular.
The Fuck NO people DO NOT LEARN. Across many decades they keep saying and doing the same stupid shit.
And NOW, they have abandoned their anti-war stance completely. They have abandoned all efforts at even rudimentary intellectual consistency. They just do what they are told to do, and shout what they are told to shout. This is the SAME THING they have been accusing of all these years. The inverse of knee-jerk patriots is knee-jerk anti-patriots.
And I will add that against the global landscape of human history, by and large we HAVE been the good guys, more often than not. History is filled with horror, with violence, with injustice, with repression, with crimes of all sorts. But no nation I can think of has ever combined so much power with so much restraint. We could have conquered the world, easily, in the aftermath of World War 2. We could have invaded many, many nations who would not have had a shred of a prayer against us. We are an 800 pound gorilla which on balance behaves quite well.
And I live in a nation where I can SAY ALL OF THIS. People do not really understand how rare freedom of speech is. It has never REALLY been a value anywhere, in any nation, in all of human history, UNTIL WE MADE IT SO.
We are all sinners, as individuals and as groups. All of us–ALL OF US–have fallen short in some way or other. When someone sins you do not give up on them. When I myself sin I do not give up on me. The task is to see clearly, and to–over time and with much continual effort–DO BETTER.
You can’t do better in a nation which does not value dialogue. We cannot elect better politicians if the election are rigged. And you cannot even discuss “better” if intellectual and moral coherence are not treated as the intrinsically necessary tools they are.
Gobbledly-gook shouting down and banning intelligence–in a sort of ideational Gresham’s Law–is not something any sane, morally aware person could or should condone.