Posted on 05/10/2003 11:16:11 AM PDT by Stultis
The awful truth: arrogant America got it right
By Joanna Murray-Smith
May 11 2003
Last week, George Bush appeared on the front page of the International Herald Tribune in military gear. Earlier, he had made an appearance on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which had been deftly positioned for the cameras with the sea in the background, disguising its actual position (off San Diego).
What this told us, not that any of us needed it explained, is that US presidents get away with presenting themselves in the vernacular of Hollywood. The public not only gets, but seems to like, politics with production design.
Subsequently, an opinion writer in the Tribune noted that British journalists who witnessed this absurdity had remarked that if Tony Blair had tried such a stunt "the press would have demanded to know how many hospital beds could have been provided for the cost of the jet fuel". In this regard, Australians owe more to their British antecedents than their American amigos. We don't accept pretension or phoniness in our politicians, even in the pursuit of national pride.
One of the remarkable and fascinating things about living in Europe, as I have for the past five months, is to observe at close hand the vast cultural and political differences that coexist within remarkable physical proximity - a hallmark of the northern hemisphere. America juggles the gravitas of power with the comic absurdity of show-biz. England comes to the party, but laughs behind its back. In Italy, France, Germany, London, they shake their heads in wonder at the world's most powerful democracy's intolerance of criticism, even (and perhaps especially) from within its own borders.
Here, in Italy, where I am living, the people I meet don't talk about the war. In social situations, we all laugh about Bush and his marionette vacant-eyed performances, John Wayne meets Ned Flanders (unlike our own Mr Burns), but no one can quite foresee the opinion of others about the war. Suddenly the neat divisions of pro and anti, liberal and conservative, once written in neat ink, havebeen smudged by reality's thumb-print. The simpleself-definitions of the past don't work in the same way.
Two months ago, one could readily announce one's participation in an anti-war march. Now, many of us are caught in a grey blur. The black and white feelings of recent months have become smudged in the aftermath of what your everyday ingenue (Holly Golightly) might describe as a Very Confusing War. Ideological convictions began to founder at the sight of rejoicing Iraqis. People tried to find nice ways of saying that the casualties were few enough to warrant the outcome. And liberals like me had to ask themselves if in the end American hypocrisy mattered enough to outweigh the actual result - if confused and cynical motives (oil, presidencies, imperialism etc) could diminish the simple humanitarian triumph.
My generation grew up inside the recriminations about Vietnam, in part through the movies. We were raised inside a distrust of political administrations' motivations, their propensity for accurate judgement, for justice. We had engendered within us a pervasive sense of the barbarity of war that was (and is) not only intellectual, but emotional.
No one likes to U-turn in public... on wives or husbands, political beliefs, dinner party opinions. We like to state our case and stay true, fearful that any re-evaluation will make us look like intellectual sissies. It can't have been easy for the communists of the 1950s to watch the tanks roll into Hungary and see that juggernaut crush their belief system - a belief system not only at the core of their political lives, but for many, their entire lives. Hopefulness, conviction, passion, then, as now, must sometimes be sacrificed to reality's infuriating complexity - but it sometimes takes courage to admit it.
Many of us from other Western countries, Australia included, have an entrenched view of America that oscillates between fury and hilarity at its blinkered patriotism, at its presidential high-jinks with Bush as cowboy, complete with wardrobe, at its growing Fox and Friends right-wing self-congratulation and its seeming inability or refusal to search its own soul.
And yet, the World's Policeman did something no one else could or would do. It could have all gone horribly wrong, but it didn't. Civilians died, young men and women paid all kinds of prices and both Western and Iraqi children who lost fathers or homes have had their personal maps drastically redrawn by the hand of fate. But the fear and the torture is over. America, in all its infuriating arrogance, acted. Not so long ago, I dreaded this. And now, I have to admit, I was wrong.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/10/1052280480071.html
I'm amazed by the presumptious nature of Euro-weenies thinking that their poo-pooing of how the most successful and powerful democracy in the world operates somehow makes them more correct and sophisticated.
Weren't these the same nitwits that were poo-pooing our criticisms of Clinton for being Puritanistic and unworldly?
It can't have been easy for the communists of the 1950s to watch the tanks roll into Hungary and see that juggernaut crush their belief system - a belief system not only at the core of their political lives, but for many, their entire lives. Hopefulness, conviction, passion, then, as now, must sometimes be sacrificed to reality's infuriating complexity - but it sometimes takes courage to admit it.
Yes, the disciples of Gramsci, or Engels and Marx, who have sworn their lives to indoctrinating future generations are having a difficult time of it. Especially as our "John Wayne" "cowboy, complete with wardrobe," Presidents like Reagan and Bush keep shining the light on fail, evil political systems and defeating them.
Perhaps instead, it is the left's "inability or refusal to search its own soul" and recognize that it's "blinkered" anti-Americanism, with veiled calls for greater socialism and the rebellion of the proletariat, will not achieve the self-discipline, self-restraint and moral strength we have lost to the ideology of the counter-culture baby boomer's irresponsible individualism and pleasuremongering?
My generation grew up inside the recriminations about Vietnam, in part through the movies. We were raised inside a distrust of political administrations' motivations, their propensity for accurate judgement, for justice. We had engendered within us a pervasive sense of the barbarity of war that was (and is) not only intellectual, but emotional.
Somehow, I don't think the security of our country is found in a nostalgia for flower painted VW's.
Whenever landing an airplane, as much as is possible, one lands (and takes off) into the wind. This lowers the ground speed in relation to the airspeed. This would be more important on an aircraft carrier than anywhere else.
The President of the United States, who is also The Commander in Chief of the Armed forces, was on board that airplane. I would pretty much bet my house and everything I own, that the USS Lincoln's nose was straight into the wind no matter what direction that would be.
I am sure that when Joanna Murray-Smith made her story up she thought she was being, oh so clever, but it's just a lie, plain and simple.
Maybe this attitude reflects the fact you have so little to be proud of.
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