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| UN General Assembly 192 nations Hall |
More thoughts on Middle Eastern risings against West
Editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett
Arab anger… Where is the gratitude from “saved” to “savior,”
from the “liberated” to “liberator”?
Children
should be grateful to their parents? How much more insult will the new
world heap onto the very old and wise world?
The questioning of anger and the expectation of gratitude “is
predicated on three propositions,” says analyst Andrew Bacevich, propositions which
are sacred to U.S. policymakers and would-be policymakers who get together and exchange
business cards.
Proposition 1: humanity
yearns for liberation ─ as defined in Western (i.e., predominantly liberal,
secular) terms.
Proposition 2: the United
States [by divine guidance or godly edict] has an assigned role of nurturing
and promoting this liberation ─ advancing what George W. Bush termed the ‘Freedom
Agenda.’
Proposition 3: as U.S. intentions
are righteous and benign … the exercise of U.S. power on a global scale merits
respect, and ought to command compliance.
“Belief in these three propositions,” Bacevich says, “depends
on viewing history as ultimately a good-news story. [And] if the good news
appears mingled with bad, the imperative for the faithful is to try harder.
Forget Baghdad and Kabul ─ onward to
Damascus and Tehran.”
But real life is neither fairy tale nor delusion.
History is not a good-news story, the author points out. “Its
destination and purpose remain indecipherable, even (or especially) to an ‘intelligence
community’ that purports to peer into the future but cannot provide adequate
warning of attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities.” Civilian thinkers do noticeably
no better.
“The ‘Big Idea’” these days is “marketed as explaining
everything in three words or less — ‘Unipolar Moment,’ ‘End of History,’ ‘Clash
of Civilizations,’ ‘Indispensable Nation’ ─ [and boasts] a shelf life of about
six months.”
West’s “freedom” rejected
“The notion that American power can be counted on to deliver
American-style freedom is particularly wrongheaded when applied to the Muslim
world. The problem is not that Arabs,
Iranians, Afghans or Pakistanis have an aversion to freedom,” Bacevich notes. “On
the contrary, they have provided abundant evidence that they hunger for it.”
The problem, rather, “is that twenty-first century Muslims
do not necessarily buy America’s twenty-first century definition of freedom—a definition increasingly devoid of moral
content. The varied inhabitants of a
dauntingly complex Islamic world want to decide for themselves what the
exercise of freedom should entail.
“Many of them believe freedom should consist of something more than individual autonomy and
conspicuous consumption.”
Self-determination embraced, projected
On both sides of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, protesters in
the Middle Eastern region and beyond, “are demanding their collective right to
self-determination,” he observes. “That desire has made them seem stubbornly
unreceptive to outside tutelage and painfully sensitive to perceived
expressions of disrespect, no matter how insignificant [or significant] the
source…”
… Collides with intractable, entrenched, flawed foreign
relations model
“The United States,” Bacevich recalls, “has aligned itself
all too often with forces of despotism and oppression.” On Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s watch, the tendency persists: Consider the year-long protests
of dictatorial rule in Bahrain, authoritarian clampdown on nonviolent protesters,
physicians and human rights workers with help from the Saudis; the U.S. Fifth
Fleet occupies; the U.S. government remains silent as Bahrainis cry for “freedom.”
Solution: change U.S. foreign relations paradigm
Ease Middle Easterners’ justifiable anger
“Sometimes the only remedy for a badly damaged relationship,”
Bacevich says, “is to give it a protracted cooling-off period.… Such a
breathing spell is very much in order for America’s dealings with nations of
the Islamic world.
“No preaching. No invasion. No ‘nation building.’ … Given
the poisonous nature of existing relations, an intermission, a breathing spell,
of something like a century sounds about right.”
To be effective in the world, to walk in peace and
nonviolence, Bacevich suggests that Americans must be “willing to close the
yawning gap between the values we loudly profess and the way we actually behave.…
“If we Americans think we have something to teach others ─
let us do it as exemplars.”
As a fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace
Studies at the University of Notre Dame, I expect Professor Andrew Bacevich is
not talking about continuing the U.S. example of terrorizing the world with threat,
intimidation and chaos, missiles, bombs and drones, contractors and other killers;
makers of violence, conflict, destabilization and displacement, particularly but
not only in the Middle Eastern region.
Sources and notes
“Bacevich: What the Arab Movie Riots Mean for U.S. Foreign
Policy ─ Death of a U.S. ambassador raises questions about America’s
foreign-policy assumptions” (Andrew J. Bacevich), September 17, 2012, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/09/16/bacevich-what-the-arab-movie-riots-mean-for-u-s-foreign-policy.html
Andrew J. Bacevich
Public intellectual and analyst on U.S. foreign and military
policies, Andrew J. Bacevich is author of Washington
Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War; The
Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism; The Long War: A New
History of U.S. National Security Policy since World War II (editor); The New American Militarism: How Americans
Are Seduced by War; and American
Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy.
He is professor of international relations and history at
Boston University and a visiting fellow at the Kroc Institute for International
Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. The Kroc Institute for
International Peace Studies on its website says it is “a leading center for the
study of the causes of violent conflict and strategies for sustainable peace.”
Its faculty “conduct research, teach undergraduate and graduate-level peace
studies courses, and contribute to peace building worldwide.” http://kroc.nd.edu/aboutus
Bacevich holds a doctorate in American diplomatic history
from Princeton University. In 2004,
Bacevich was a Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin and has
held fellowships at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies,
the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
He writes widely for general interest and scholarly publications. http://kroc.nd.edu/facultystaff/visiting-fellows
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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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