By Beth Henry
“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction. Anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”
-- James Baldwin
Perhaps the most pernicious and cloying aspect of the hearings concerning the Abu Ghraib horror has been the defensiveness -- “but we’re the good guys…really!” -- and posturing and mutual stroking among so many in government and the media.
Somehow, events that should engender in this country’s leaders and citizens humility, if not abject shame and soul-searching, became the occasion for “daily affirmations” of the sort Stuart Smalley used to beam into his mirror.
“We’re good enough. We’re smart enough. And, doggone it, people like us!”
So we have had an odd counterpoint. It’s as if images of casual, even jovial, cruelty and degradation appeared before our eyes, while our ears were soothed with the voices of children singing, “We Are The World.”
We are good. We are bringing the light of democracy to those who sat in darkness.
March, 2003 -- Peter Arnett is outside Baghdad as the much bally-hooed “shock and awe” campaign begins. Like a kid at a fireworks show, he practically chortles in excitement as the night explodes over a civilian population, a large percentage of them children.
Yes, and now over the past three years, the night has been turned into day for tens of thousands of liberated souls, right before the final, irrevocable darkness.
We are good. We feed the hungry. We help other countries stay free, peaceful, and prosperous.
Before the U.S. set out to bomb every last stone in Afghanistan into powder, our leaders, in a blinding flash of public relations genius, had tons of food air-dropped into the country. Already teetering on the edge of a catastrophic famine, Afghans would have welcomed supplies of rice, flour, sugar, and other food staples. Instead, they got such lasting gifts as pop tarts and teddy bears, followed by even more lasting gifts of terror, death and dismemberment, homelessness, and starvation.
Bush also called upon our school children (for whom he has only slightly more regard than those upon whom he calls down the bombs) to raise money to help feed the Afghan children. When my son and daughter came home and said they were collecting contributions at their school, I was livid. What? Was the idea to fatten them up for the kill?
We are so certain that we are the good guys that when faced with the facts of brutal human wretchedness within our own ranks, such as those at Abu Ghraib, we respond in one of two ways.
One is that those who commit those acts in our name, such as the prison guards at Abu Ghraib, are exceptions. They do not represent the majority of our men and women in uniform, heroes all, and worthy of our deepest, undying gratitude. Nor do they represent the attitudes of our citizens (despite what one might see in our own prisons). We will find those responsible and “bring them to justice.” (“Justice” has apparently become as popular a destination as Disneyworld.) Then everyone’s hands will be clean, and we can get back to killing terrorists and evil-doers.
The other argument takes a wee bit more finesse, as is usually the case when standing on thin ice and trying talk over the sound of it cracking.
The war on terrorism and the fight for a democratic Middle East is a pivotal fight, and one in which the United States has both a moral and divine imperative. The bad guys are “evil-doers,” “terrorists,” and “thugs.” As such, we owe them none of the finer considerations we would owe to actual human beings. The United States, its government, its armed forces, and its citizens are the powerful but free and benevolent empire. Anyone who opposes us “hates democracy,” and has no respect for human life.
Many in this country, now that so many troops have died, and so many horrors have transpired, and so many billions of dollars have vanished, are loathe to believe that the invasion of Iraq was unjustified, illegal, and cynically motivated by money, politics, and the Bush scion’s own oedipal fixation.
Many want to believe that this war is, indeed, comparable to WWII, a war often called, oxymoronically, a “good” war.
Of course we want to believe. We were brought up with romanticized accounts of the “good war.” The loudmouth from Texas, the farm kid from Iowa, the street-smart guy from New York City, the black kid from Alabama…oops, he was in a different regiment, but still – all went forth together and defended liberty and saved the world. Smart, ingenious, open, and generally kind-hearted and courageous – that is the beautiful, appealing picture that we cherish of ourselves as a country, and as people.
It is easier to believe in our own innocence. If you admit that the case for the Iraq war had no merit, and had no root in noble impulses toward freedom and mercy, you have to believe that we, the people of the United States of America, have been manipulated with fear, spurred on by vengeance, and rallied to commit the slaughter of countless harmless and defenseless human beings.
That we may, in fact, be just like every other country in the world, at some time in its history. In school, of course, we were often told that people have the governments they deserve. That it is by our moral superiority, our purity of motive, and our devotion to honor and freedom, that we live in the best country in the world. Other countries living standards don’t measure up to ours, because we work harder, and we are more “civilized.”
Yes, it is easier to believe the fairy tale.
And it is apparently easier to die from willful ignorance than it is to stay alive by growing up and facing the truth.
Over many decades, many of us have gazed in narcissistic bliss at the portrait of kindness, decency, courage, toughness, ingenuity, and, above all, integrity, that hangs over the mantle of our Homeland. Air-brushed, pristine, unchanging, and the very antithesis of the portrait of the feral, filthy, creature in the attic, with its breath from a crypt, and its gaze from a bottomless pit.
A monster.
Because, like a giant toddler with a huge appetite and no toilet training, armed with weapons that could destroy the entire planet, the imperial United States tears across the globe, throwing deadly tantrums and demanding unconditional acceptance.
The United States, whose population constitutes 4.6% of the world population, consumes 23.7%, nearly a quarter, of the energy produced in the world. The environmental impact of that consumption is equally disproportionate.
When it came to giving the U.S. international impunity for what is essentially exploitive colonization, 9/11 was Bush’s “trifecta.” Colonize, privatize, and pollute. After all, if they are not terrorists, they are probably communists, and they are interfering with the conspicuous and unbridled consumption that constitutes our way of life.
Who are we, then? Are we the innocent, idealistic, benevolent country we see in the media mirror? Or is our country a rapacious, brutal empire bent on world hegemony at any cost, but a great profit to a very few?
Yes, to both questions. We are no different, in our sloppy, contradictory humanity than any other populace on earth, except in one respect.
Too many of us believe in fairy tales long, long after we should have gained the maturity to see reality with some humility and pragmatism. And unless we look at ourselves the way others see us, and learn to actually strive to be who we say we are, we will never grow up.
We will remain childish, destructive, and narcissistic, easily led by those like the Bush dynasty and their enablers, who would con us into laying down our lives, giving up our prosperity, and losing our own humanity by denying the same to others.
“Evil” is not necessarily the opposite of innocence. It may be, and seems to be, in the case of the United States, a lack of humility, a moral pretentiousness we have not earned, and a refusal to join the rest of the human race in solidarity and mutual respect.
A monstrous, and false, innocence.
Beth Henry lives near the Texas Gulf Coast with her husband and two children. She is an Axis of Logic Founding Member and Contributing Editor. She has worked as a technical writer and security analyst for NASA contractors. She does not hate neo-conservatives; she just feels better when they’re not in charge. Contact the author at beth@axisoflogic.com
<b>Reprinted from:</b>
http://www.axisoflogic.com/cgi-bin/exec/view.pl?archive=63&num=8857
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