Published As: National pride or international divide?
Washington Square News
By Aaron Leonard
September 15, 2008
In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, John McCain described the moment he “fell in love” with his country, sitting in a jail cell in North Vietnam after he’d been roughed up. But he wasn’t the only victim in the story. He’d been captured after dropping bombs.
As McCain spoke, I was trying to figure out: what good is this patriotism he and Obama are clamoring to claim?
In October 2001, when the United States led the invasion of Afghanistan, the Daily News reported on how a bomb aimed at a Taliban anti-aircraft site landed off course in a Kabul suburb. It ended up hitting a mud home as a father and his seven children were eating breakfast. Gul Ahmad, an Afghan woman, told the reporter at the time, “They killed all of my children and husband. What shall I do now? Look at their savageness.”
McCain’s response? He told the Daily News, “Civilian casualties, however regrettable and however tragic … have to be secondary to the primary goal of eliminating the enemy.” The war in Afghanistan, we are told, was a “good war,” aimed at going after the forces who attacked our nation and way of life on Sept. 11.
Both McCain and Obama, a self-described “strong supporter of the war in Afghanistan,” ignore basic things. They don’t talk about how the United States built up the Afghani mujahedeen to oppose the Soviet occupation of the ‘80s, teaching them most of what they know.
I’m not arguing the Taliban or this form of Islam are a force for good in the world. They are not. But they are in no small part a consequence of the United States’ pursuit of its global interests. According to McCain and Obama, supporting that pursuit is a matter of “protecting America.” Such logic will only make matters worse.
What about other wars? World War II was another so-called “good war,” but it set loose slaughter on an industrial scale. We know a fair amount about the hideousness of Hitler’s nationalism, but what about America’s? This was a time when “killing Japs” was in vogue. Not only did the United States occupy huge swaths of the Pacific, it ushered in the nuclear era, complete with the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Then there was the Cuban Missile Crisis. For 13 days in October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union were a hair trigger away from nuclear war. The Soviet Union, hoping to up its leverage in its contention with the United States, was secretly installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. When the United States discovered what was going on, it quickly went to the second highest state of military alert, complete with preparing missile silos, launching armed nuclear planes and planning to invade Cuba. Rather than confronting the prospect of a diminished role in the world and letting the Soviets have an advantage, the United States was prepared to begin a nuclear war. This is the insane logic of “Country First” — a logic that percolated from Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, American interests in Georgia and beyond.
So I didn’t get all misty-eyed when McCain told his story. I don’t think Obama’s attempt to come up with a more nuanced definition of patriotism is much better. The history of the United States is one in which very bad things have been done under the national banner, with all the patriotic fervor accompanying it. We ought to be trying for something much better, embracing the world and breaking down the divisions between nations. I have an incomplete answer on how to get there, but we need to find a way. There is too much at stake.
A long time ago now, John Lennon sang, “Imagine there’s no countries/It isn’t hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion, too.”
We’ll leave religion for another day. But this matter of patriotism is something to get away from.
Aaron Leonard is a contributing columnist. E-mail responses to opinion@nyunews.com.