"But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
"What's the matter with you? Now don't you two see that you're in love with each other? I mean, why can't you face that already?"
Kramer to Jerry and Elaine, on Seinfeld
I’m feeling much better, thank you.
For more than three years, now, I’ve been waging an inner battle against U.S. president George W. Bush. More than that, let me be honest, I’ve been guilty of fostering anti-American thoughts and sentiments. These did not go so far, I believe, as to take joy from the events of 9/11, but part of me doubtless mused, "Well, that was a long time coming."
I was encouraged in all this, of course. I’d bought and embraced the argument made by Chalmers Johnson in Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, published a full year before the terrorist attack on the twin towers. ‘The term "blowback," Johnson explains, "… refers to the unintended consequences that were kept secret from the American people," such as when "the victims fight back after a secret American bombing, or a U.S.-sponsored campaign of state terrorism, or a CIA-engineered overthrow of a foreign political leader."
More recently, I’d been struck by Michael Ignatieff’s claim in Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan that, "the Americans cannot operate a global empire without European diplomatic and economic co-operation," even if that means, in practice, Washington in the lead, and London, Paris, Berlin and Tokyo following reluctantly behind." No ardent anti-American himself, Ignatieff at least gave voice to my fears about where real power lay in the post-9/11 world.
But then there came Robert Kagan’s Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. "It is time to stop pretending," Kagan begins his book, "that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world." Instead, he continues, Europe is "turning away from power, or… moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and co-operation," even as America remains "mired in history, exercising power in an anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable, where true security … depend[s] on the possession and use of military might."
You see, I’m not entirely to blame. My suspicions of American actions, motives and aspirations have received support and nourishment from others, albeit unintentionally as far as any individual author is concerned. Unless that author is Michael Moore, of course, whose angry diatribe against Bush – first in Stupid White Men and then Dude: Where’s My Country? – was obviously meat and drink to my well-established prejudice.
And yet now I’m better.
I now see that last year’s war on Iraq was fully justified. The presence (or not) of weapons of mass destruction was never the issue – the clear threat posed by the regime of Saddam Hussein was. If the American people, British allies or even the United Nations needed some tangible provocation by which to salve their own consciences, then that was their problem. No-one – not Tony Blair, not Kofi Anan, and certainly not me – ever really believed the WMD story, and shame on us if we now hide behind a manufactured surprise that such weapons were never found.
Similarly, I now see that globalization – as an economic and cultural process – really is nothing more than the expansion and proliferation of American liberal capitalist values around the world, and that that’s a thoroughly good thing. "(H)istory is neither for nor against," writes John Ralston Saul in an essay in this month’s edition of Harper’s magazine. "It just is. And there is no such thing as a prolonged vacuum in geopolitics. It is always filled." And just as the Roman and British empires filled that vacuum in their times, so the American empire – under the cloak of globalism – has stepped up to the plate over the last century. It’s tempting to mock, of course, an empire whose dominant expressions are McDonald’s burgers, Nike runners, Wal-Mart greeters and KFC, but these are clearly preferable to either the concentration camp or the gulag, creations of other 20th century would-be empires.
I also now see that there’s nothing really wrong with Americans themselves. OK, as a nation they may be smug, loud, insular, ill-informed, uninquisitive, obese, bigoted and reactionary, but they’re also happy. Again, we may look in shock and awe upon the culture of excess that the U.S. has spawned since 1945 – from the size of their meal servings to the renewed length and narcissism of the Oscars – but we should beware of casting the first stone. More than we care to admit, we have borrowed, begged and stolen from U.S. pop culture for as long as our two nations have existed, and there but for the grace of God, etc….
So, I’ve learned to stop worrying and to love the United States. Indeed, I now recognize "the folly of anti-Americanism," to borrow from historian J.L. Granatstein’s new book Who Killed the Canadian Military?, for what it is: an immature, juvenile and irresponsible reaction.
And as for President Bush, I admit I’m wrong again. No longer do I see him as a draft-dodging, election-rigging, war-mongering, gay-bashing pawn of the Republican right, but rather as a global defender of peace, freedom and strength. After all, Orwell was right. In a world of ever-shifting values and indifference towards historical truth, there’s no real distinction between peace and war, freedom and slavery, or strength and ignorance. I love you George – like a big brother.
Like I said, I’m feeling much better now, thank you.
Wait, nurse, don’t go! I told you, I’m feeling much better…. |
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