Excerpt:
This United States begins this challenge as a virtual fortress of self-absorption can't win that way. It must view the world as its culture, not someone else's.It can't win if interest in foreign service is at an all time low or if foreign
language programs in high schools don't enjoy the funding of football.
We are part of this world," said Foerster. "And we'd better start paying attention."
The problem all along with us Americans is that we are too freaking busy to pay attention to world affairs and too preoccupied with SUVs, beer, sports, blowjobs Presidents get, and hitting that stock that will make us rich!. I propose we pass a law immediately to give everyone a month vacation GUARANTEED every year, to give us time to mellow out and reflect on what the hell we are all about and maybe learn about the world and how other people view us, who knows, it may even help to fight the terrorists.
post-gazette.com
A wake-up call to see the world as it sees
us
Sunday, September 16, 2001
On Wednesday morning, the first day after Everything Changed In America,
TV news correspondents noted repetitively that "the sun has come up in New
York." And for once, it was not clear if this was just journalistic
throat-clearing or actual public reassurance that the events of Sept. 11 had
not indeed knocked the world off its axis.
The weight of the World Trade Center's tumbling twin towers seemed almost
forcefully sufficient to have done exactly that. Most of America can get
through most days without giving the World Trade Center, its massive
physicality or its pan-global symbolism, any thought, but it was eerily difficult
going to bed without the WTC towering over Lower Manhattan.
Now, five days after Everything Changed In America (the phrase that
accompanies life's so-called watershed episodes), it might be of some utility to
look at where these inevitable changes ought to take us.
Long before the spectacle of sinister forces using American commercial
aircraft to topple icon-status American skyscrapers to kill thousands of
American citizens live on American television, the depth of hatred for this
country abroad was evident to anyone who could find something other than
London and Paris on a map.
That it was not understood by many people in this country -- and thus not of
sufficient national interest to compel American Intelligence to perform in the
manner needed to prevent the events of Tuesday -- is something that ought to
attract some attention if everything is ultimately going to change in America in
a positive way.
"There are people who look to the United States for leadership; there are
people who think the United States can do no wrong; there are people who
look to the United States as a source of great power and responsibility," said
Schuyler Foerster, president of the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh. "But
there's also a slice of folks out there who really hate us. People who resent
American power and resent America's way of life, people whose hatred, as
I've said, goes way beyond policy disagreements."
No matter the course of the next months and years diplomatically and
militarily, America cannot, either by itself or in concert with its allies, remove
zealots from the planet. It can make and must make the world safer, but it
cannot possibly make it safe. There will always be zealots, and there will
always be danger in varied degrees.
But the United States can have a better sense of itself in the world community
and in how that world views it. We have to understand that when we are not
terribly selfless, to put it charitably, in the way we gobble the planet's
resources, when we fire up a Gulf War essentially to make the world safe for
Lincoln Navigators, people are going to resent us, and some of them are
going to be deadly.
Similarly, the people who see us as the silver spearhead of all the world's evil
can't be written off as frustrated rogue car bombers. Sept. 11 was not a
production even remotely possible without the enabling financial and
camouflage support of hostile governments. Nothing is simple in this fluid
world mosaic. The same Afghan rebels who might be harboring Osama bin
Laden are likely the sons of Afghan rebels trained by the U.S. government to
thwart insurgent Soviet forces 22 years ago. But America has no stomach for
details. Blow 'em up. That's our version of a measured response.
Even as postmodern literature has continued to celebrate American ingenuity
and courage in the face of grave national crises, the question for the new
millennium will be, does today's America, the children and grandchildren of
Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation," have the resolve, the knowledge and,
indeed, even the attention span for the challenges ahead?
The night before Everything Changed In America, a reporter prepping Miss
America contestants for the new quiz component of the "scholarship" pageant
asked 10 contestants a series of five general information questions. Four
could not name the significance of Dec. 7, 1941, and two could not name the
vice president of the United States. One reportedly left in a fluster of protest
after the second question. There she goes, Miss America.
This United States begins this challenge as a virtual fortress of self-absorption.
It can't win that way. It must view the world as its culture, not someone else's.
It can't win if interest in foreign service is at an all time low or if foreign
language programs in high schools don't enjoy the funding of football.
"We are part of this world," said Foerster. "And we'd better start paying
attention." |
