Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In my travels—whether to El Salvador,
Europe, or Iran—I fi nd that many peo-
ple outside our borders think of the US
as an “empire.” But anytime I mention
this back home, I get a feisty response.
(Don't shoot me. I'm just the jester.)
Americans hate thinking of them-
selves as an empire. After all, weren't we
fi ghting an “empire” in our Revolution-
ary War? And wasn't it an “empire” that
crucifi ed Jesus and persecuted his fol-
lowers? The USA—that bastion of free-
dom and democracy—might not literally
claim other countries as part of our own
territory. But only we can declare some-
one else's natural resources on the far
side of our planet “vital to our national
security” (but which, in reality, are vital
only to maintaining our accustomed
material lifestyle).
You could debate long and hard
about whether the US is an “empire.”
But actually, what you and I think is
irrelevant. The fact is, much of the
world
views
us that way, and there-
fore they—especially our enemies—will
treat us as an empire.
Why are we perceived as an
empire by so many people? For start-
ers, look at our United Nations voting
record: According to the UN website,
in 2007, the US voted “no” more than
any other nation. In 40 percent of
those “no” votes, we were outvoted by
at least 150 to 4. Who stands with us
as we oppose issues such as creating
a declaration of rights for indigenous
peoples, the human right to food, child
labor laws, dropping the embargo
against Cuba, and restricting illicit small
arms trade? Israel, Marshall Islands,
and Micronesia. Even if you write of
the United Nations as a group of one-
world-fi xated loonies, many other
countries take it seriously...and our dis-
missal of it speaks volumes about our
willingness to engage in peaceful and
constructive problem-solving.
When others look at us, rather
than see a hardworking policeman of
the world defending freedom wherever
we can, they see a nation with mili-
tary bases in 130 countries. They see a
nation with 4 percent of this planet's
people spending as much on their mili-
tary as everybody else put together.
Some might brush of question-
able American policies by saying,
“Well, that was just our government.”
We
are our government. We cannot
rest on the notion of the “innocent
civilian.” Morally, when it comes to a
free and powerful nation like ours, I
believe there are no innocent civilians.
If I pay taxes, I am a combatant. Every
bullet that fl ies and every bomb that
drops has my name on it. It could be
a good bomb or a good bullet. Some-
times military action is necessary. But
right or wrong, I take moral respon-
sibility for it. That's simply honest,
responsible citizenship.
Many Americans consider the
emblems of the Bush years—Iraq War,
Guantánamo, the Abu Ghraib torture
scandal, world isolation, domestic sur-
veillance, loss of civil liberties, and so
on—a reasonable price to pay because
we avoided another terrorist attack.
Much of the rest of the world saw
these as an overreaction to a tragic
situation. The wave of sympathy that
poured into America after 9/11 could
have lifted the whole world to an
unprecedented new unity. Instead, our
leaders manipulated our national grief
