"U.S. intervention in Syria: War for virtue" by Henry Allen

"As John Updike wrote: “America is beyond power, it acts as in a dream, as a face of God. Wherever America is, there is freedom, and wherever America is not, madness rules with chains, darkness strangles millions. Beneath her patient bombers, paradise is possible.” The United States doesn’t fight for land, resources, hatred, revenge, tribute, religious conversion — the usual stuff. Along with the occasional barrel of oil, we fight for virtue. Never mind that it doesn’t work out — the Gulf of Tonkin lies, Agent Orange, waterboarding, nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, the pointless horrors of Abu Ghraib, a fighter plane wiping out an Afghan wedding party, our explanation of civilian deaths as an abstraction: “collateral damage.” Just so. We talk about our warmaking as if it were a therapeutic science — surgical strikes, precision bombing, graduated responses, a homeopathic treatment that uses war to cure us of war. “Like cures like,” as the homeopathic slogan has it; “the war to end all wars” as Woodrow Wilson is believed to have said of World War I. We send out our patient bombers in the manner of piling on blankets to break a child’s fever. We launch our missiles and say: “We’re doing it for your own good.”"  Henry Allen

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I have long dealt with the minimally hidden messianism of the American tradition and style.  A great many people do not accept or comprehend the extent to which this kind of "thinking' colors our decisions.  pl  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/us-action-in-syria-another-war-for-virtue/2013/09/01/a91b8bcc-1327-11e3-a100-66fa8fd9a50c_story.html

Comments

[FB Ali]

"...... The wars are killing us"

They're killing us, too!

[turcopolier]

FB Ali

My duty is to the United States. I am trying to do that as I always have done. I have made it clear that I am repelled by the antic capering of recent American administrations. What do you want me to do, defect to Harper's Canada? pl

[Walrus]

Col. Lang, is the messianism of which you speak morphing into a lust for planetary domination?

To borrow a phrase from an Australian politician, are we in a "crash through or crash" situation?

What happens if Obama succeeds in attacking Syria and they and the Iranians aided by Russia and abetted by China, succeed in engaging in a robust and costly defence?

The Russians are good chess players, that may stump poker players like McCain.

[Walrus]

Col. Lang,

On the subject of your own actions, I am sure you have done way, way more to try and inject reason, sanity, dignity, true patriotism and plain common sense into Washingtons deliberations than you could, or should, ever let on at your website and at great personal cost. Whatever happens we salute you.

[turcopolier]

walrus

The simple answer is yes. This kind of mindlessness is spreading with the dumbing down of the culture. pl

[FB Ali]

Col Lang,

You are doing your duty in exemplary fashion. You provided valuable service to your country in the past and are doing the same now. I hope it is adequately appreciated by your country.

From an outsider's point of view you are also fulfilling a great need in raising your voice against those actions of your country's leaders that negate the noble ideals on which it is founded, and which cause other countries and their peoples much grief.

As for Harper's Canada, I'm afraid you won't find much peace here. This gentleman is trying his best to make this country a camp-follower of the US in its "antic capering".

[Madhu]

As a flight of fancy, I wonder if there is a different period in our history (meaning the US) that can serve as a touchstone? Outside the waves of messianism that seem to come with regularity?

"Built around mariners' journals of their pioneering voyages, "Yankee India" charts the early development of commercial and cultural relations between the United States and India in the Age of Sail. The end of colonial rule in 1783 had given American merchants and ship owners the freedom to trade in Asia. Voyages from ports along the eastern seaboard were the first American links to the distant and exotic culture of India. Mariners' journals and letters speak of encounters with vastly different ways of life that sometimes challenged and sometimes reinforced ideas about decorum, religion, and morality and that influenced attitudes toward imperialism, legitimate rule, and free trade." Amazon description to "Yankee India".

http://www.amazon.com/Yankee-India-Susan-S-Bean/dp/1890206296

An academic book review I stumbled across opined that the book showed some early American traders "avoided forming judgement". Oh, they thought they were culturally superior but it was a more live-and-let live "American mariner"attitude. We trade with you, you trade with us, you are you, we are us, etc.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1559802?uid=3739656&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102584936201

A quirk of US history or some other cultural strand that can nurtured and rediscovered?

One can only hope, the non-stop meddling is heartbreaking for us and for others.