Important history lesson. There are those that like to paint the USA as a war mongering nation. Wikipidia basically paints us as always being at war, throughout our history - irregardless of the purpose of conflict, morally equivocating things like the holocaust with say Manifest Destiny ... totally ignoring the context of history and what they were doing at the time - nope, just those war mongering Americans out there killing Indians and beating slaves . Talk about ethnocentric rationalization .. and convenient historical amnesia!
It seems that reasons for conflict are more or less immaterial to the average mind in Europe. Europeans, especially Germans, pretty much seem to label war as bad no matter the cause - I'd say (before our involvement) that's because they never went to war for a noble purpose. In fact, before the USA, throughout civilization, conquering (stealing) was the model of normality (certainly it was the German model until very recent times - and it was the European model for more than a millennium) - so I assume they just assume that if we're fighting we're doing something bad - no matter the cause. (Is it coincidence? I can't find that the Germans even have a word to separately distinguish evil from just bad).
Well, the USA is the first great nation to depart from that conqueror model of civilization, however imperfectly - so it peeves and hurts me to see our country branded as it is (oftentimes by our own misguided media or as at present by our un-American President). The USA does not have a blameless past, but we do not deserve the image being painted of us by our enemies. Yet it is this image of a bellicose USA that our supposed friends are knowingly or unknowingly accepting as their own image of us - an image fostered by those who would destroy Western Civilization. I just wish it were clear from whose "Ministry of Truth" this image emanates.
Obama can learn a lot from Thomas Jefferson's response to Muslims in 1801 - Young Conservatives:
'via Blog this'
No comments:
Post a Comment