As Canadians, we are experts at satirizing the United States. We have their number, and prove it often: “Saturday Night Live,” “SCTV,” “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” . . . What we are not as good at is understanding the U.S., and for similar reasons. What we spy across that border is absurdity, pretension, pomposity, self-delusion. It rings true to the rest of the world. But precisely because we see them so clearly and acerbically from the outside, we tend to be puzzled by how seriously they take themselves.
Take as an example this week’s downward spiral in Iraq. How did the United States manage to get into, and even create, the one situation it knew it must avoid: simultaneous conflict with Sunnis and Shiites? Everyone knew that was the scenario from hell. Yet at the very moment they faced a bloody battle in Sunni Fallujah, they shut down the paper of their main Shia foe and jailed his aide. Much U.S. policy in Iraq can be explained by realpolitik and bloody-mindedness, oil resources, need to control the region, etc. — but not blundering, so it seems, into their own worst-case scenario.
Here is Canadian Naomi Klein, puzzling about it in The Globe and Mail: “Why is [occupation boss Paul] Bremer pushing the comparatively calm Shia south into battle?” and then suggesting the United States might be “creating the chaos it needs to declare the handover impossible.” But that seems implausible. Even as skeptical an observer as British journalist Robert Fisk wrote, “Many Iraqis are now asking if the Americans want disaster in Iraq. Surely not.”
I happened to lunch last week with an American who has lived and worked here for many years. He told me a colleague, during a discussion on global politics, suddenly said, “I never realized how much of an American you are.” Of course I am, he replied. The demarcation point was his assumption that the United States has the power to impose its will anywhere in the world and should do so. Most Canadians can’t even imagine that mentality. They do not identify with overwhelming power or see things its way; Americans, even the poorest, often do.
It seems to me this attitude illuminates U.S. behaviour in Iraq this week. Proconsul Bremer said the Shia dissident, Muqtada al-Sadr, who after all is an Iraqi, and whose father was murdered by Saddam Hussein, “has an unacceptable vision of Iraq,” and will be jailed. It’s the sort of thing Canadians would satirize, but behind it is an unshakable conviction that power is ours alone, and we may impose not just our will but our definitions of right and reality.
Since power always assumes it has not just might, but good on its side, the current mood of unquestioning, sanctimonious religiosity in the United States suits this moment of maximum identification with global power.
It would be nice to think Americans have not always seen themselves primarily in terms of their power, and that many still don’t. A lot of good places have been wrecked over time by that kind of intoxication, especially when it expresses itself through expansion or conquest. Republican Rome turned into the villainous empire, revolutionary France deteriorated under Napoleon’s conquests etc.
The real American patriots today — I’d even say the real nationalists — oppose U.S. intervention abroad, not because they feel sorry for the poor locals, but because it undermines the best of American values at home.
A century ago, Mark Twain opposed the conquests of Cuba and the Philippines. In that tradition today are Michael Moore, Ralph Nader and probably Howard Dean.
My friend Bill Hinton spent many years in China during its revolution, as an ardent supporter. When he returned to the United States, all his notes for a book were impounded by a red-baiting Senate committee. He spent years getting them back, then more years moonlighting in a steel mill while writing his classic, Fanshen. Near the end of the Cold War, I asked if he still considered himself a Maoist. “I never have,” he said. Then what are you? I asked. “An American nationalist,” he said.
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
