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Zonie63 -> RE: New poll: do you see the US as an ideal (3/9/2012 1:58:49 PM)
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You make some good points. Thanks for the detailed answer.
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ORIGINAL: SoftBonds
1. In Europe (according to my understanding, I could be wrong), mortgage debt is attached to the person, meaning if you "walk away," from a house, they sell the house and then go after you for the remainder. In the US we just take the house and shrug. Because of that difference, and the lack of understanding of that difference, Europeans bought up a lot of US mortgage debt, which is now worthless. I don't think they are happy with us for that.
Good point, although if they go after someone who walks away from their mortgage in Europe, that seems even more hardcore capitalistic than in America.
But I can understand that Europeans would be miffed if they got stuck with a lot of bad paper from America. Let the buyer beware, I suppose. But we were equally misguided here in America, so it's adversely affected us as well. Our economic philosophy was somewhat altered during the Reagan-Greenspan era. Not so much in the capitalistic sense, since we were always capitalist and politically dominated by the wealthy elite at the expense of the poor and working classes. The only real change that's happened is that we've become more globalist and more entangled in foreign affairs than we used to be.
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2. Prior to Bush Jr, most of our foreign adventures were either requested by the locals or current owners (Vietnam, Korea), or were deniable/covert (Grenada, Iran-Contra). The US funding of Al-Quida under Reagan, for instance, was well known, but everyone could pretend it wasn't happening. So while the US was capable of acting underhandedly to advance military or political interests (we funded Al-Quida to hurt Russia), we at least tacitly acknowledged that it was wrong by "hiding," the actions. The war in Iraq was so blatant and self-serving that it couldn't be defended by anyone who claimed to support our ideals. It made a lie out of the "America supports freedom," meme.
I think it can be reasonably argued that our actions in Iraq were also requested by the "locals" in the sense that the first Gulf War was to liberate Kuwait and protect Saudi Arabia. Considering Bush's lovey-dovey relationship with the Saudi royal family, it seems pretty obvious. The problem seems to be when we tie our own interests to the interests of other nations, either for economic or ideological reasons. Just because other nations request our help, it doesn't mean that we have to give it.
It seems that, as a result of the World Wars and the Cold War, Americans have been programmed to accept the idea that it's our global duty to go around and protect freedom all over the world. (Never mind that few of these countries we've "protected" were ever really all that "free.") We've been making the world safe for democracy for nearly a century now, so it seems difficult to break out of that pattern when we've gotten used to it for so long. A lot of what we've done is the result of the geopolitical vacuum that was left after the World Wars.
Personally, I think it would be better if the world was run more on a regional power system, rather than the U.S. going all over the place. Russia and the EU nations are much closer to the Middle East than we are, so why can't they handle problems of instability and aggression in the region? Why does America have to do it?
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3. The war on terror included acts of kidnapping and torture, which also destroyed our ability to claim the "moral high ground." America stopped being the good guys who accepted some problems in order to hold to our ideals, and became instead the nation equivalent of the preacher who decries immorality then is caught smoking meth with a gay prostitute. We chose to pursue the tactics of "the ends justify the means," and found ourselves in the land of hypocrisy.
Not to say it is all Bush's fault, but...
It was the result of war fever which gripped the country in the years following 9/11, although much of that has since died down and now, we're looking at our actions with more objectivity. But we have a history of doing nasty things to people and then regretting it afterwards. We were actually much worse during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. I'm not sure if we ever were the "good guys," even as much as we preach "freedom" and pat ourselves on the back all the time. But I think that many Americans and Europeans cynically knew all this for generations.
I don't think this is anything new, although the climate of international relations seems to have changed as a result of the end of the Cold War. What may have been tolerated in the past in the name of preventing Soviet expansionism doesn't seem tolerable anymore. I think many nations may be wanting to put the Cold War in the past and move on to the next era, but many US policy makers (and large portions of the citizenry) are still stuck in Cold War mode.
Not to mention the fact that we've grown so heavily dependent upon the military-industrial complex that it would even further hamper our already flagging economy if we were to suddenly reduce defense spending and the size of our military. People in military towns go into panic mode if ever there's a talk of a base closure in their area. Defense plants are also major employers in their areas, with a lot of high-paying jobs which are vital to local economies. A lot of people vote for war-mongers out of self interest.
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Anyway, it will take a lot of time and good actions to reverse the perceptions. Frankly, Obama isn't doing enough, especially since we have the patriot act and Guantanamo still hanging over our heads.
Edit, we also claim to support democracy, but reject the results when someone we don't like gets elected, e.g. Hamas.
Yes, this is also true. It's also true that many of the governments we've supported in the name of freedom and democracy weren't really all that free to begin with. I wouldn't really expect Obama to do much of anything to break that pattern. We've had Republican and Democratic administrations come and go, but none of them have done much of anything to set any new precedents in the area of U.S. foreign policy. They're still in Cold War mode.
I think that it's still possible for the U.S. to clean up its image and change some of the perceptions out there. I think the biggest thing that frosts a lot of people around the world is not so much what we do, but all the extracurricular propaganda and hypocrisy behind it is like adding insult to injury.
A lot of that propaganda seems more intended for internal consumption, so the people on the homefront will continue to support all this military adventurism, as well encroachments upon their civil liberties. In times of war, people generally accept tighter security controls such as the Patriot Act. I'm not sure if it's as bad now as it was during the J. Edgar Hoover era, along with McCarthy, Nixon, and others who went too far with their activities in the name of U.S. national security.
Even FDR has some black marks on his record, and he's often celebrated as one of the greatest Presidents we've ever had, revered and admired by Democrats and Republicans alike. I have somewhat mixed feelings about him myself, although his legacy has definitely had a huge influence over American domestic and foreign policies ever since. Of course, FDR also imposed economic restrictions and turned America into a virtual command economy during World War II. They had rationing and strict wage/price controls in effect - something that would be absolutely unheard of nowadays.
FDR could also see the world situation unfolding, and it's reasonable that he and his successors would try to find ways to capitalize on the situation for America's interests. And that's what we've been doing ever since.
From the viewpoint of responsible Americans who would rather that their government behave responsibly, it's kind of an uphill battle. For one thing, there's this endless propaganda machine that churns out all this crap for consumption by the masses. For those that are able to wade through all that, they would then be faced with the positions and arguments commonly held by our national security experts and analysts who generally tend to use the "national security" argument to justify what our government does. They tend to use tactics of ridicule and belittlement to discredit any opponents as being "too stupid" to understand the intricacies of U.S. foreign policy and geopolitics overall.
There's also the question of opposing one's nation during a time of war, which is something that a lot of people have trouble with. As long as the country keeps going to war, a lot of people might consider it their patriotic duty to continue supporting the government, even they don't actually agree with what they're doing.
So, I would say that it's probably going to be a difficult task to try to change America's image and reverse the perceptions held by those in Europe and elsewhere in the world. We may not necessarily be an "ideal" anymore, but we could still be a free nation with a decent quality of life that doesn't feel the need to go around righting the wrongs of the world. Another issue that has to be addressed in regards to changing our image is what we might replace it with. As Americans, we have to ask ourselves just who the hell are we and what the hell are we doing? I've heard a lot of people say that America is not a true nation and has no real culture or traditions of its own. Even the name "America" seems to present some problems in regards to our national identity in contrast with the identity of the continents of the Western Hemisphere. Also, even though our history is considerably shorter than that of our European counterparts, there are still some things in our past which have left a bitter taste in many people's mouths.
Maybe it's also time to revisit the original ideals behind NATO, the United Nations, and other international organizations and treaties which were formed largely as a reaction to a world situation which has long since passed. I'm not saying that the U.S. should become isolationist, but we might need to take a different approach to geopolitics other than business as usual.
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