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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
February 3, 2002
Damn Yankees
WASHINGTON. On the face of things it is hard to see how any reasonable person could object to the "war" the United States is now waging against international terrorism and terrorist regimes. The targets in this conflict are the common enemy of all civilized men and women regardless of race colour or creed; and the magnitude of the threat they pose was revealed to the world on the morning of Sept. 11. That the U.S. is compelled through the unpreparedness of its allies to conduct this fight in its military dimension almost single-handedly should be a cause for soul-searching gratitude among those allies hardly the resentment we have so often seen. To be fair so far as truth can be discerned from polls the free Western world is indeed grateful and on balance quite supportive of the cause the Americans are leading. Where there are not even polls in the tyrannies of the Middle East of Africa and Asia there is occasional evidence of the respect that the U.S. can command -- the belief that for all its flaws the U.S. remains the champion of freedom. Perhaps the best evidence of this is the huge demand for U.S. visas -- especially in places like the West Bank and Gaza. Potential terrorists may well be concealed among them but for the great majority it is common knowledge that America is a land of freedom and opportunity -- the preferred destination of the world's emigrants for the better part of the last two centuries. Action is more eloquent than words and the real attitudes of people are often revealed in what they take for granted. This is especially true of intellectuals the sometime masters of paradox (though sometimes paradox is their master). The many thousand generously-funded U.S. universities are magnets to young literates from every culture. Often enough the very radicals who spout anti-American doctrines imbibed them in the safety and leisure of U.S. campus life. And in their confusion of ends and means they make free use of technology and media largely developed in that America. The world's most prominent self-styled "Palestinian refugee" Edward Said is the perfect example of this: a man who would be nothing without the chic and prestige conferred by Cambridge Mass. and Berkeley Calif. and the publishing institutions of New York N.Y. This man who advanced a mendacious critique of "Orientalism" is himself a product of the scholarship he demeaned; and able to command elite audiences in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East -- because of his success in America. Second only to the terrorism itself this more muted and often self-satisfied anti-Americanism puts a great evil on open display. And while the conventional and verbal anti-Americanism is in a different league from the terrorist strikes -- closer to hypocrisy than to murderous hatred -- I think the two are animated by a common cause. A cause to be sought in the murk of the individual human soul not in the externals of political argument. I come to this view after three decades of adult life having encountered and often tried to resist anti-Americanism in several countries. Again and again I have discovered it is a simple prejudice rather than a product of comprehensive reasoning: for the charges brought against those "damn Yankees" shift loosely between the U.S. polity and people and are no sooner effectively rebutted than more charges come forward in their place from received litanies. There is a quality of "knowingness" about them a flavour of conspiracy -- as if the world's most open nation and society were secretly behind every local misfortune. "We all know." In the column I wrote on the very day of the September catastrophe I touched upon the envy of America which I believed to be its "root cause". This column (misfortunately bumped from the Citizen but it landed elsewhere) drew incredulous responses from several fairly sophisticated readers. In the words of one I can't believe anyone would sacrifice themselves and many others over something as petty as envy. Almost five months later I feel more certain that my analysis was essentially right: that we must look to moral rather than political causes to understand this "natural" antipathy which so much of the planet shares. Voices stilled by horror in the wake of the terror attacks on America resumed their anti-American tirade when the U.S. took action in Afghanistan and recently raised the pitch over the prisoners issue at Guantanamo Bay. And even in the first hours after the catastrophe Canada's CBC was unselfconsciously airing a procession of guests making liberal use of the "but" construction. ("Yes that was horrible but we have to realize why the Americans are so hated.") It was no surprise to me though a surprise to others to find both right-wing tabloids and left-wing pundits joining the fray in Europe over what I have come to call facetiously the Gitmo Gandhis ; to see the speed with which even mildly conservative fellow-Canadians jumped to the conclusion that the U.S. was mistreating its "hostages" and wilfully ignoring Geneva Conventions that few had ever read. Nor are they now eager to retreat after the collapse of all their arguments and thorough investigations by the International Committee of the Red Cross. For while the "left" has compounded anti-Americanism into dogma the "right" in Canada Europe and beyond participates in the envy of U.S. success. From British lords down to humble skinheads sneering at the American "vulgarity" confers a comforting sense of personal and national vindication when no other prop can be found. Let me stoop only briefly to allow that America is imperfect like all earthly things; that its governments and people have committed many sins; that might does not make right; that power and wealth are not good in themselves; that goodness truth and beauty may be found in every country and town. Let us even sometimes expect more from people born to every earthly advantage and sometimes less from those born without. The mistake is to assume that envy is something so petty. Our ancestors wisely placed it among the mortal sins. It is a canker in the heart that spreads by vanity through the human soul turning worldly into spiritual failure. It can never be right to indulge this disease. We are told it is wrong to hate our enemies. What begins to happen when we hate our friends? David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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