This might seem like trolling, on a U.S. based board. I can only assure you that it’s not and hope that you take my word for it and accept my sincerity.
For 75 % of my life, the boogy man was communists in general and specifically the U.S.S.R. When I did my military service, back in '81, our sarge said "Well, we’re officially a neutral country, and the threat could come from out of the blue, or the EAST.
Arguably, the U.S. has built its world power on a couple of things:
Hollywood /controll the emotions and you controll the people. Obvioucly, Hollywood was not a propaganda tactic, but it has served the U.S. purposes well for at least 70 years.)
WWII (which left the U.S. unharmed, but with a large industrial complex in place and a huge debth of gratitude from across the globe. PLus the ability to refurnish the wreckage WWII left).
The consumer society (effectively putting a lot of power in the hands of working class Joe Sixpack, who is more easily swayed by emotional arguments thjan factual).
These, and other thing, have not been orchestrated by some secret masonic cabal meeting at Wednesdays in an Old Warehouse in Virginia. As is the case with most of history - they are just circumstances that happen to join forces to create a breeding ground for an idea.
But these last 15 years have made me wonder.
The fall of the Wall meant the end of the Evil Empire. A lot of the world put up with the U.S. bullying us around, since (1.) you saved our asses in (to a lesser ectent) WWI and (to a larger extent) WWII and (2.) "my enemy’s enemy is my friend, i.e. you kept the Commies is Russia in check.
But with the fall of the U.S.S.R and the Wall, we were left with a tremendous vacuum. How would the U.S. justify (internationally) being a bully and (domestically) keeping up spending billions on the military?
Maybe the raison d’être for the U.S. is to have an external foe to use as a boogy man and justify its bullying and military expenditure.
I know I’m bordering on conspiracy nut territory here. Or even taking wide strides into that land. And I’m still not saying that there’s a super secret evil scoiety plotting all of this.
But would the response have been the same, had there still been a Berlin Wall? And is it possible that the world leaders in the West jumped at the chance of having a brand new external enemy to justify the “Business as Usual” model? Could this whole Islam scare have been as unimportant on a Global Scale as the autrocities in Myanmar, had there not been a need for an enemy?
Rightly or wrongly, the September 11 attacks are pretty clearly the justification for the United States’ new unilateral assertiveness in foreign policy and military affairs. Before that the country seemed to be headed to, if not actual isolationism, at least a period of not caring so much about foreign affairs–George W. Bush campaigned (in 2000) against nation building, and in favor of “modesty” in our foreign policy. Whether any particular policy is justified or not, American actions do genuinely seem to be a reaction to the September 11 attacks.
Now, you could argue that some actions are an overreaction, or simply misguided or misplaced (Iraq), but unless you’re arguing that someone other than Al Qaeda staged the September 11 attacks or at the very least knowingly permitted them to happen, I don’t think radical Islam was just picked out of a hat as the new global hegemony justifying threat.
MEBuckner is entirely correct. Any analysis is entirely off the mark if it does not take 9/11 into account, or downplays it as anything less than a dramatic world-shaping event in the minds of millions of Americans.
Quite the opposite, actually. You’re ignoring genuine conspiracies to commit acts of terrorism on a large scale, with Sept. 11 being the most spectacular and followed gleefully by bomb attacks in Bali, London and Madrid. A “super secret evil scoiety” does exist, after a fashion, but the membership isn’t American.
The Americans don’t have to conjure enemies. The real ones will suffice.
Ironically, what tends to make Muslim terrorists angry is precisely our very success in spreading our culture. Many commentators opposed to the (very badly named) War on Terror noted that the idea that they “hated us for our freedoms” was false and foolish. They have a point. But it is not uncoincidental that Al-Qaeda struck primarily at the WTC, a building which was not considered all that important in America. They wanted to strike at American prestige, business, and pride, not our power.
Yet, that was the problem. We couldn’t ever have peace with them, because we were opposed completely. America is matter - Al-Qaeda antimatter. I won’t get into the whole argument here, because this thread should not be a Left vs. Right issue. but simply put, many on the Right decided that not crushing the threat completely (and the threat we saw was much mor than just Al-Qaeda and that’s the primary point of contention today) would lead to it spreading, becoming more dangerous, and increasing the cost. I do not believe Islamic fundamentalism would have won that struggle. But I do believe it would lead to incredible death on both sides.
But it was not really our first choice. Remember, after the fall of Communism, Americans, including all reaches of government, wanted to cut military spoending, relax a bit, and look after business. America did not become a super-power by choice (that role was forced upon us in WWII, and we did so at great cost in money, lives, and domestic unrest). Even today, we cannot all agree on what was a worthwhile sacrifice or when.
America’s identity was not built on power. Our “empire” was right here at home. We were the last western power to go looking for colonies; we were by far the first to dismantle ours voluntarily. Granted, that didn’t work out very well for the Indians, but we’ve moved past that now - and much faster than most societies. We weren’t always the richest or most powerful. We just wanted to be left alone. And there has always been some power with a chip on its shoulder trying its best to piss us off. England, France, Mexico, Germany, Russia, China, Al Qaeda.
This is at best way oversimplified. It’s true that we didn’t have as many actual colonial possessions as the older western powers. (“Last to go looking for colonies”? Well, duh! We didn’t even exist during the first few centuries of European colonialism!) But that hasn’t stopped us from frequently trying to exercise quasi-imperial control, economically and even politically and militarily, in places such as Latin America and southeast Asia. Just because we didn’t officially put our name on it or fly our flag over it doesn’t mean that we necessarily “just wanted it to leave us alone”.
This also is too simplistic; as others here have pointed out, our current military adventurism, however misguided it may be, received its major social impetus from the 9/11 attacks.
However, I think you’re right to some extent, in that what President Eisenhower called our “military-industrial complex” has certainly not been slow in getting whatever advantage it can out of the current trend. But we do that with any trend. When we had the post-Communist, pre-9/11 lull in military activity, we simply bumped up our arms sales to other countries, and then started dusting off the missile defense prospectuses for domestic development.
Yes, weapons and war in some form are a very big part of our national business, and have been for sixty years or more. But we’re very flexible when it comes to finding markets for that business, and don’t need to manufacture enemies out of whole cloth in order to boost our sales.
By the way, if you’re interested in pursuing this topic further, a good place to start might be the writings of Noam Chomsky, particularly Pirates and Emperors or Hegemony or Survival. Chomsky’s quite far-left for an American political commentator, and much of what he says I don’t agree with, but he presents a well-informed radical perspective that’s extremely critical of US foreign policy. So if you want to know what’s the absolute worst that can be said (by a reasonably honest and sane person, that is) about what the US is up to, read Chomsky. (Almost certainly, a number of people who have never read any of Chomsky’s books will now rally round to call Chomsky a nutjob, a traitor, a Communist, and so forth. I’m always interested in hearing criticisms of Chomsky from people who’ve actually read one or more of his books, but there’s no need to pay any attention to the other kind.)
Honestly I felt a lot safer during the Cold War than I do now.
Yes the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. had (have) the ability to destroy the world many times over but in the final analysis I think MAD worked and the Soviets and the US were, in the end, pretty pragmatic about it. The chances of the two going mano-y-mano for a final showdown were pretty slim. The two superpowers were content to keep the status quo mostly and fight each other by proxy in various third-world countries.
I think it is a much more dangerous world today. The Soviets and the US generally kept those in their respective sphere’s of influence in check and no one really did much of anything (at least anything drastic) without some kind of approval from one or the other. With the collapse of the Soviet Union you got all sorts of loose cannons on deck. Loose cannons who will never face the U.S. in a standup battle on a battlefield but sneak handfuls of people here and there who can do inordinate amounts of damage. Bad enough some guy strapped with explosives blowing up a cafe but it seems only a matter of time till they graduate to a bio weapon or chemical weapon or, worst of all, a nuke.
What really scares me is I think it is only a matter of time. Sooner or later someone, somewhere, will get their hands on this stuff and use it. The U.S. and Soviets would never go there but some of these terrorist organizations seem all too clear that they would love nothing better and likely will if they ever get a chance.
It is a whole other argument whether you think the current actions of the U.S. are justified by the above. Personally I think Bush has only made things worse for the U.S. and done nothing more than stiffen resolve of many groups to go after the U.S. any chance they get. That said I think the U.S. definitely needs to maintain a potent military. I do not see terror groups as very rational but so far the U.S. has shown if you do something really over the top it will come after you. While the terror groups are nimble and hard to pin down I do not think they want to hand an excuse for the U.S. to roll in and occupy their countries either. Osama took out the WTC, we took out Afghanistan.
If the world think the U.S. is too aggressive now imagine what the U.S. will do if a WMD is used against us. The military will go positively ape shit on someone…