OMNI
US “EXCEPTIONALISM”
NEWSLETTER #3,
Compiled by Dick
Bennett for a Culture of Peace and Justice.
(#1 April 26, 2011; #2 Sept. 26, 2013).
Here is the link to all OMNI
newsletters:
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/
What’s at
stake:
Belief that the US is an exceptional nation boundlessly benign is a
major cause and justification of US bloody imperialism. Who believes that myth? The percentage of US populace aged 45 to 59
who believe it is 65. Aged 18 to 29:
45. “Harper’s Index,” Harper’s Magazine (Sept. 2015), p.
9. “American Exceptionalism” This phrase offers the perfect time for each
of us who knows better to resolve never again to use the phrase but also never
to use the word “American” to refer to one country of the Americas—North,
Central, and South—and one country of North America. “American Exceptionalism” is a false phrase
composed of two illusory words created in the cauldron of the arrogance of
power. See OMNI’s Exceptionalism newsletters
OMNI’S
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL DAYS PROJECT: Affirming days supporting nonviolence,
world peace, human rights, social and economic justice, democracy, and
environmental stewardship; providing alternatives to the other days (Indigenous
People of the Americas Day instead of Columbus Day).
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EXCEPTIONALISM NEWSLETTER Nos. 1-2
#1 US “EXCEPTIONALISM” NEWSLETTER #1,
APRIL 26, 2011
#2 US “EXCEPTIONALISM” NEWSLETTER #2,
September 26, 2013
Contents of US Exceptionalism Newsletter #3
Poetry by
Gerald Sloan
Myth of Human
Supremacy
Derrick
Jensen, The Myth of Human Supremacy (2016).
These two myths in combination--humans
superior in the chain of being (in the Renaissance: God:King:Men), US humans
superior among nations—have produced exceptionally arrogant and bullying,
rapacious and killing.
MYTH OF US
EXCEPTIONALISM (EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD)
Critics of
the Myth Teach US History
Chomsky, Who Rules the World? The most powerful single book against the
Myth of US Exceptionalism in Foreign Policy
Lawrence
Wittner, We’re #1 in violence abroad and at home.
Rothschild on
Obama’s Favorite Whitewash
Dick, LTE on Michael Ignatieff’s Book on US Exceptionalism
Hixson on US and USSR
VIETNAM WAR:
ALL-OUT WHITEWASH 2016-17
US Violence
Dick: Christian
Appy, American Reckoning, Who Are We?
Doug Anderson’s Review of Appy
J. William Fulbright, The Price of Empire
Henry Kissinger, Amy Goodman Interviews Greg
Grandin about
US Dark Side
Real Exceptionalism Imagined and Begun, Now
Almost Lost: Harvey Kaye, The Four Freedoms
Google Search
Contents
of Nos. 1-2
MANIFEST DESTINY IN ZERO GRAVITY
by Gerry Sloan (rcvd 12-17-15)
"Carpet crawl" is
what my daughter-in-law
would call "a First
World problem," putting it
in perspective, along with
sinus headaches
and burnt toast. Call it the
American Dream
having a bad day. Never mind
the problems
those unexceptional people
in the Third World
have to deal with. You know,
like deforestation
and radiation, by-products
of our special brand
of liberation, which
desperate countries learn
to shun, along with
our diplomacy at gunpoint.
ODIOUS ODE
By Gerald Sloan (rcvd 10-31-16)
The reporter on NPR announces
the poaching of African elephants
meanwhile sharing a scary statistic:
that in four years two-thirds
of the
species on Earth may go extinct.
In the rearview mirror I see
elephants and giraffes at the
miniature golf course across
the street, lifesize effigies
to our wreckless greed.
MYTH OF HUMAN SUPREMACY
The Myth of Human
Supremacy By
DERRICK JENSEN
May
17, 2016 | 352 Pages
In this
impassioned polemic, radical environmental philosopher Derrick Jensen debunks
the near-universal belief in a hierarchy of nature and the superiority of
humans. Vast and underappreciated complexities of nonhuman life are explored in
detail—from the cultures of pigs and prairie dogs, to the creative use of tools
by elephants and fish, to the acumen of caterpillars and fungi. The paralysis
of the scientific establishment on moral and ethical issues is confronted and a
radical new framework for assessing the intelligence and sentience of nonhuman
life is put forth.
Jensen attacks
mainstream environmental journalism, which too often limits discussions to how
ecological changes affect humans or the economy—with little or no regard for
nonhuman life. With his signature compassionate logic, he argues that when we
separate ourselves from the rest of nature, we in fact orient ourselves against
nature, taking an unjust and, in the long run, impossible position.
Jensen
expresses profound disdain for the human industrial complex and its ecological
excesses, contending that it is based on the systematic exploitation of the
earth. Page by page, Jensen, who has been called the philosopher-poet of the
environmental movement, demonstrates his deep appreciation of the natural world
in all its intimacy, and sounds an urgent call for its liberation from human
domination.
“Derrick
Jensen’s ferocious love of this earth and all her living beings has ignited and
crafted a genius work that has the potential to shift human consciousness. The
Myth of Human Supremacy must be read and reread and read again. It will shatter
and rearrange your beliefs, call up your sorrow and rage. It will humble you
and inspire you to fight with every bit of your being for the end of hierarchy,
dominance and destruction.” —Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues and In the Body of the World
“In the hottest
year we’ve ever recorded, perhaps people of all persuasions should take a
moment to grapple with Derrick Jensen’s anger and love. This is a necessary
provocation—it’s clearly time to think anew about who and what we are.” —Bill
McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life
on a Tough New Planet
“Derrick
Jensen’s Myth of Human Supremacy brilliantly challenges our fatal belief in
‘progress,’ our inability to absorb the looming ecocide around us, and the
deadly consequences of our hubris.
Jensen has never fled from hard truths.
This book is no exception.
Jensen’s work is vital to our understanding of the suicidal impulses
that exist within human society.” —Chris Hedges
“[The Myth of Human Supremacy] offers a
new way of thinking about the role of humans in relation to all other life on
Earth, and a call to reevaluate our most basic assumptions about human
domination of the planet.” —George Wuerthner, author, ecologist, and wildlands
advocate
“This book
dissects and demolishes one of our culture’s most pernicious assumptions, that
humans are the pinnacle of evolution and the supreme species on the planet.
Derrick Jensen is a master at digging into our beliefs, turning over rocks and
unflinchingly looking at what lies beneath. The Myth of Human Supremacy
brilliantly exposes our dangerous, nature-devouring belief that humans are
superior and reveals to what absurd lengths we will go to preserve that belief.
This is an important book full of critical lessons. It shows the value—and
urgency—of humbly taking our true, unexceptional but valuable place among all
of life’s marvelous creatures.” —Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia’s Garden and The
Permaculture City
“When I read
Endgame (2006), I believed I had found the clearest description of patriarchal
civilization and how it is killing every aspect of the living planet. I was
mistaken. Derrick Jensen has outdone himself. In heartfelt, compelling prose,
he asks the reader to question the obvious lies embedded within the dominant
paradigm.” —Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of conservation biology at the
University of Arizona
“Jensen’s
arguments are ferocious, heartbroken, hilarious, and lethally logical. The
truths he tells are the most important in this reeling world, bar none.”
—Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Moral
Ground and Great Tide Rising
“This book made
me weep. It’s an angry ballad, an anguished love song to life itself. I sit
here, tears in my eyes as I type these words, as if yet another human needed to
be heard from. I sit here wishing, dreaming we could instead hear what the
Amani flatwing damselflies, ploughshare tortoises, Asiatic black bears, and the
pea plants have to say about The Myth of Human Supremacy. I imagine they’d
bellow in unison: ‘It’s about fuckin’ time you caught on!’” —Mickey Z., author
of Occupy These Photos
“Brilliant,
lucid and gorgeously written, The Myth of Human Supremacy attacks the core of
the planet-scale problem, the idea that only humans matter. The book is elegant
and poised; the argument unassailable; the narrative engaging, witty, and full
of surprises; the research meticulous. This is perhaps my favorite of his
books.” —Suprabha Seshan, environmental educator, activist and restoration
ecologist, winner of 2006 Whitley Fund for Nature award, Ashoka Fellow,
Executive Director of Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary
“In this
important book, Jensen upends longstanding ‘truths’ about human domination of
the planet, demanding that we not only rethink our ideas about politics and
economics, but about ourselves. He focuses our attention on the multiple,
cascading crises that can be traced to human supremacy—the deeply destructive
illusion that the world was made for humans because we are so very special.
Jensen considers, and rejects, every reason we want to believe ourselves the
anointed species, and challenges all of us to take seriously the moral
principles we claim to hold.” —Robert Jensen, University of Texas at Austin,
author of Plain Radical
“The Myth of
Human Supremacy is poetic and deeply moving. Jensen is unafraid to interrogate
unquestionable assumptions and ask ‘crazy’ questions. Here he dismantles the
core of our crises, the mythologies that guide authoritarian, unsustainable,
human supremacist cultures. Read this and weep, but then with new awareness
shake off emotional and ideological blinders you have been taught, and take
action with those who understand that humans are one among many.” —Darcia
Narvaez, Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, blogger at Psychology Today (“Moral Landscapes”),
and author of Neurobiology and the
Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom
“Derrick Jensen
elegantly shows that everything in our world is interconnected, and animals,
plants, and even bacteria are sentient, conscious, and much like us. We humans refuse
to believe that, preferring to believe a vast gulf exists between us and the
rest of the natural world. That leads to the end of us and all of nature as we
kill our planet. I hope this book will help people change their belief in human
supremacy and help save our world.” —Con Slobodchikoff, PhD, author of Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the
Language of Animals
“In his most
important work since A Language Older
Than Words, Jensen lays bare the sociopathy of the ideology of human
supremacy: the fact that western ‘civilization’ is based on domination,
thievery, and murder, while the natural world innately gravitates towards
harmony and balance. This supremacy is destroying the planet, an infinitely
complex living entity we’ve only barely begun to understand. This book is
mandatory reading.” —Dahr Jamail, author/journalist
“It is said
that a revolution begins in the mind—an alternative to our present
circumstances must first be imagined before we can be moved to fight for it. So
we should all be grateful to Derrick Jensen, who with this book breaks the
ideological chains of human supremacy and reveals the world as the
interconnected web of being that it truly is. With our illusions ripped away,
we may yet be able to save ourselves and our beautiful planet from the system
that is killing us all.” —Stephanie McMillan, author of Capitalism Must Die
DERRICK JENSEN
is the best-known voice of the deep ecology movement. Winner of numerous awards
and honors including the Eric Hoffer Book Award, USA Today’s Critic’s Choice,
and Press Action’s person of the Year, Jensen is the author of over fifteen…
MYTH OF US EXCEPTIONALISM
Critics of the Myth
NOAM CHOMSKY,
Perhaps the Single Greatest Antidote to the Myth of US Exceptionalism
WHO RULES THE WORLD? The Greatest Single Critique of the Myth
Who Rules the
World? BY Noam Chomsky
image:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/content/dam/catalogue/pim/editions/173/9780241189443/cover.jpg
Internationally renowned
political commentator Noam Chomsky examines America's pursuit and exercise of
power in a post 9/11 world
Noam Chomsky is the world's foremost intellectual activist. Over the last half century, no one has done more to question the great global powers who govern our lives, forensically scrutinizing policies and actions, calling our politicians, institutions and media to account.
Noam Chomsky is the world's foremost intellectual activist. Over the last half century, no one has done more to question the great global powers who govern our lives, forensically scrutinizing policies and actions, calling our politicians, institutions and media to account.
The
culmination of years of work, Who
Rules the World? is Chomsky's definitive intellectual investigation
into the major issues of our times. From the dark history of the US and Cuba to
China's global rise, from torture memos to sanctions on Iran, Chomsky explores
how America's talk of freedom and human rights is often at odds with its
actions. Delving deep into the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and
Israel/Palestine, he provides nuanced, surprising insights into the workings of
modern-day imperial power.
The world's
political and financial elite have become ever more insulated from democratic
constraints on their actions. Chomsky shines a powerful light on this
inconvenient truth. With climate change and nuclear proliferation threatening
the survival of our civilization, the message has never been more pertinent or
more urgent: the need for an engaged and active public to steer the world away
from disaster grows ever greater.
Fiercely
outspoken and rigorously argued, Who
Rules the World? is an indispensable guide to how things really are
from the lone authoritative voice courageous and clear-sighted enough to tell
us the truth.
Read more at https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/280531/who-rules-the-world/#luUQPzioxlHv5fkL.99
The United States Is Number 1 — But in What?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-wittner/the-united-states-is-no-1_b_5974516.html
·
American politicians are fond of telling their audiences that
the United States is the greatest country in the world. Is there any evidence
for this claim?
Well, yes. When it comes to violence and preparations for
violence, the United States is, indeed, No. 1. In 2013, according to a report by
the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. government
accounted for 37 percent of world military expenditures, putting it far ahead
of all other nations. (The two closest competitors, China and Russia, accounted
for 11 percent and 5 percent respectively.) From 2004 to 2013, the United
States was also the No. 1 weapons exporter in the world. Moreover, given the U.S.
government’s almost unbroken series of wars and acts of military intervention
since 1941, it also seems likely that it surpasses all rivals when it comes to
international violence.
This record is paralleled on the domestic front, where the
United States has more guns and gun deaths than any other country. A study released in late 2013 reported that
the United States had 88 guns for every 100 people, and 40 gun-related deaths
for every 400,000 people―more than any of the 27 economically developed
countries studied. By contrast, in Britain there were 6 guns per 100 people and
1 gun-related death per 400,000 people.
Yet, in a great many other areas, the United States is not No. 1
at all.
Take education. In late 2013, the Program for International Student
Assessment released a ranking of how 15-year old students from 65
nations performed on its tests. It showed that U.S. students ranked 17th in
reading and 21st in math. An international survey a bit earlier that year by the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that the ranking
was roughly the same among American adults. In 2014, Pearson, a multinational educational company,
placed the United States 20th in the world in “educational attainment” ― well
behind Poland and Slovakia.
American health care and health fare even worse. In a 2014 study of health care (including infant
mortality, healthy life expectancy, and mortality from preventable conditions)
in 11 advanced industrial countries, the Commonwealth Fund concluded that the
United States ranked last among them. According to the World Health Organization,
the U.S. health care system ranks 37th in the world. Other studiesreach somewhat different
conclusions, but all are very unflattering to the United States, as are studies
of American health. The United States, for example, has one of the world’s
worst cancer rates (the seventh highest), and life
expectancy is declining compared to other nations. An article in the Washington
Post in late 2013
reported that the United States ranked 26th among nations in life expectancy,
and that the average American lifespan had fallen a year behind the
international average.
And what about the environment? Specialists at Yale University
have developed a highly sophisticated Environmental
Performance Index to
examine the behavior of nations. In the area of protection of human health from
environmental harm, their 2014 index placed the United States 35th in health
impacts, 36th in water and sanitation, and 38th in air quality. In the other
area studied―protection of ecosystems―the United States ranked 32nd in water
resources, 49th in climate and energy, 86th in biodiversity and habitat, 96th
in fisheries, 107th in forests, and 109th in agriculture.
These and other areas of interest are dealt with by the Social Progress Index, which was developed by Michael Porter, an
eminent professor of business (and Republican) at Harvard. According to Porter
and his team, in 2014 the United States ranked 23rd in access to information
and communications, 24th in nutrition and basic medical care, 31st in personal
safety, 34th in water and sanitation, 39th in access to basic knowledge, 69th
in ecosystem sustainability, and 70th in health and wellness.
Poverty, especially among children, remains a disgrace in one of
the world’s wealthiest nations. A 2013 report by the United Nations Children’s Fund
noted that, of the 35 economically advanced countries that had been studied,
only Romania had a higher percentage of children living in poverty than did the
United States.
Of course, the United States is not locked into these dismal
rankings and the sad situation they reveal about the health, education, and
welfare of its citizens. It could do much better if its vast wealth, resources,
and technology were utilized differently than they are at present. Ultimately,
it’s a matter of priorities. When most U.S. government discretionary
spending goes for war
and preparations for war, it should come as no surprise that the United States
emerges No. 1 among nations in the capacity for violence and falls far behind
other nations in providing for the well-being of its people.
Americans might want to keep this in mind as their nation
embarks upon yet another costly military crusade.
Lawrence S. Wittner (www.lawrenceswittner.com)
is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical
novel about university corporatization and rebellion, What’s Going On at UAardvark?
By Matthew Rothschild on October 25, 2013
Obama’s Favorite Falsehood, By
Matthew Rothschild. The Progressive (Nov. 2013).
I imagine Vladimir Putin
took perverse pleasure at the op-ed that his foreign service wrote, under his
name, for The New York Times.
But he was right about two
things.
First, that had President Obama attacked Syria without Security Council approval, he would have violated international law.
And second, that the United States needs to get over “American exceptionalism.”
In the bellicose part of Obama’s speech to the nation on Syria, he said, in Bush-like language: “For nearly seven decades, the United States has been the anchor of global security. This has meant doing more than forging international agreements; it has meant enforcing them. The burdens of leadership are often heavy, but the world’s a better place because we have borne them.”
Really?
First, that had President Obama attacked Syria without Security Council approval, he would have violated international law.
And second, that the United States needs to get over “American exceptionalism.”
In the bellicose part of Obama’s speech to the nation on Syria, he said, in Bush-like language: “For nearly seven decades, the United States has been the anchor of global security. This has meant doing more than forging international agreements; it has meant enforcing them. The burdens of leadership are often heavy, but the world’s a better place because we have borne them.”
Really?
Was the United States an
anchor of global security and an enforcer of international agreements when it
overthrew the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953, or the Arbenz government in
Guatemala in 1954?
Is the world a better place because the United States helped overthrow Salvador Allende’s democratically elected government in Chile in 1973?
Is the world a better place because the United States helped overthrow Salvador Allende’s democratically elected government in Chile in 1973?
Is the world a better
place because the United States killed three million people in Vietnam, Laos,
and Cambodia and because we dropped twenty million gallons of napalm (waging
our own version of chemical warfare) on those countries?
Is the world a better
place because the United States gave Indonesia the green light to invade East
Timor in 1975, an invasion and subsequent occupation that wiped out one-third of
the population there?
Is the world a better place because the United States supported brutal governments in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s, which killed tens of thousands of their own people?
Is the world a better place because the United States supported brutal governments in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s, which killed tens of thousands of their own people?
Is the world a better
place because George W. Bush waged an illegal war against Iraq and killed
between 100,000 and a million civilians?
And what international
agreements was the United States enforcing when it tortured people after
9/11?
When he was at the United Nations in September, Obama again
invoked American exceptionalism. It is the favorite falsehood of U.S.
Presidents—one we can live without. . . .
Matthew
Rothschild is senior
editor of The Progressive.
- See more at:
http://ftp.progressive.org/obama-favorite-falsehood#sthash.E4YR8rYn.dpuf
American Exceptionalism
and Human Rights Michael
Ignatieff
DICK’S
LTE to Editor, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
US
Exceptionalism
John Ziegler’s letter (3-8-14) contains an
interesting perspective on “U.S. exceptionalism” regarding the character of the
people, either idealistic individuals (Turner) or materialistic conformists (de
Tocqueville). The Democrat-Gazette editorially endorses the myth as it regards
capitalism: “Never bet against America,
which has a way of coming back despite all the odds. Why is that?
Could it be because freedom has a way of outlasting, and outperforming,
the utopian dreams of statist economies?
And when this government does intervene, it’s to strengthen the rule of
law, not override it. And save the
American system, not overturn it.” (“Opinions on the Fly,” 9-3-15).
In his book American Exceptionalism and Human Rights Michael Ignatieff offers a
political analysis of US exceptionalism, particularly through the role of
international law in US behavior toward other countries. He presents three arguments.
First, US leaders sign on to human rights
and humanitarian conventions and treaties, and then exempt the US US
This
panoply of exemptions, double dealing, and legal isolationism is justified by
our leaders in four ways: US military
and economic power, sense of Providential destiny, conservative evangelical
individualism, and distinctive institutions.
No
exceptionalism here, but only naked power.
US “exceptionalism,” because it exerts a malignant influence over our
leaders and people (the arrogant belief that only home-grown truths are
self-evident) or over US international behavior (occupying the world, some 800
military bases around the world), deserves if not contempt at least profound
skepticism.
The Myth Of U.S. Exceptionalism
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-02-25/news/8804020378_1_native-americans-exceptionalism-foreign-policy
February 25, 1988|By Walter L. Hixson. Walter L. Hixson is a visiting
assistant professor of history at Northwestern University, where he teaches
courses on U.S. foreign policy and Soviet-American relations. He also is the
author of a study of the career of Soviet expert George F. Kennan. The following focuses on US misbehavior
toward the Soviet Union.
Most people
would agree that the two most vital issues in American foreign
policy today are the Central American crisis and arms control negotiations with
the Soviet Union.
In
assessing American policy on these two issues, most politicians and opinion leaders-and thus
most of the public-focus on our communist 
adversaries.
Can we trust the Soviets? Will the
Sandinistas live up to their
pledges?
That these questions, though
clearly pertinent, should dominate our thinking reflects a disturbing tendency
among many Americans to assume that the United States pursues noble and worthy
objectives while its adversaries-particularly the ``communists``-embody all
that is evil and are not to be trusted.
Underlying
these assumptions, as historians have long recognized, is a widespread faith in
American ``exceptionalism``-the belief that the United States is a ``chosen``
nation whose values and democratic institutions represent the best hopes for
humankind.
Unfortunately,
the great national myth of American exceptionalism is rooted in a widespread
ignorance of history, and this ignorance breeds intolerance and hypocrisy in
our approach to Central America, arms control and foreign affairs in general.
The first ingredient of a more
effective foreign policy might be a willingness to look more critically at
ourselves. Despite the recent bicentennial of the Constitution, too few
Americans are willing to recognize that the United States has been an imperfect
democracy. It was initially governed by a privileged elite of white propertied
males; women were nonvoting and (as they remain today) nonpersons under the
Constitution; a cruel enslavement of blacks was sanctioned; and Native
Americans were to be all but exterminated.
The point is not that the United
States is more or less evil than other peoples of the world but that we are not
as exceptional as some, including Ronald Reagan and most of the 1988
presidential candidates, would have us believe.
Greater recognition of our own
failures and limitations would make us, not a weaker power, but a stronger and
wiser one. For example, if more Americans were aware of our own early national
struggle and halting approach to democracy, they would be less likely to demand
that Nicaragua-a country wracked by war and deprivation and having little or no
democratic political tradition-promptly assume all the trappings of a
pluralistic democracy or once again face the wrath of our refinanced covert
armies.
After first adopting greater
patience and humility, we could then apply some lessons from the history of
postwar international relations to our approach to the problems of Central
America. The 1948 Soviet-Yugoslav rift, the Sino-Soviet split of the early
1960s and contemporary disputes within the communist world, for example, all
suggest that nationalism and local cultural tradition tend to override loose
alliances based on ideology. Yet too many Americans glibly assume that a
Sandinista regime will serve as a Soviet``beachhead`` in Central America.
Those who point to Cuba as an
example of Soviet intentions invariably oversimplify the complex course of
Cuban-American (and Cuban-Soviet) relations and ignore the extent to which our
own hostile response to Fidel Castro encouraged Cuba`s close ties with the
Soviet Union.
Faith in American exceptionalism
and historical blinders also undermine our efforts to mold a more constructive
relationship with the Soviet Union. Like our forebears who reassured themselves
of their own virtues by depicting the Old World as a den of corruption and
iniquity, Americans persist in seeing the darkest motives behind virtually all
Soviet behavior.
The most obvious example is our
unrealistic 40-year obsession with the prospect of a Soviet invasion of Western
Europe; there is no reason to believe the Kremlin has ever considered launching
an invasion. Another is arms control; some Americans still oppose arms accords,
or favor ``killer amendments,`` on grounds that the Kremlin leaders enter into
such negotiations disingenuously and that they ``cheat.``
This
argument not only falsely implies that the Soviets have no real stake in arms
control but also constitutes a double standard insofar as it ignores our own
violations of agreements, such as the unilateral repudiation of SALT II and the
current call for a broad interpretation of the 1972 ABM agreement. The broad
interpretation, as Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia and others have pointed out,
actually constitutes a repudiation of the ABM accord in order to pave the way
for ``Star Wars,`` which, incidentally, finds America once again in the familiar position of
escalating the arms race while couching its actions under the benign rubric of
``deterring aggression.``
Again, the
point is not that the Soviets are actually ``good`` while we persist in seeing
them as ``bad.`` It would be naive to suggest that the Soviet Union does not
pose problems for American diplomacy.
Special
attention to the Vietnam War is called for because
the US has budgeted billions of dollars to rehabilitate its reputation so
thoroughly damaged by that war.
TWO
REVIEWS OF APPY’S AMERICAN RECKONING—by
Dick Bennett and Doug Anderson-- and
a SUMMARY OF J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT ON VIETNAM IN THE PRICE OF EMPIRE by Dick.
US
IDENTITY: WHO ARE WE?
Christian
Appy, American Reckoning: The Vietnam War
and Our National Identity (Viking 2015).
Review by Dick Bennett.
The title could be Judgment: US Wars Are Who We Are, for the author ranges far wider
than the Vietnam War and his conclusions are much more severely specific than a mere tabulation. “My
main argument is that the Vietnam War shattered the central tenet of American
national identify—the broad faith that the United States is a unique force for
good in the world” (xiii).
The opening chapter, “Saving Vietnam,”
recounts the story of Dr. Tom Dooley and US intervention in Vietnam. In the 1950s Dooley was a chief megaphone for
the idealistic myth of the US as a bastion of compassion, freedom, and hope
against Communist tyranny that justified and propelled the US invasion of
Vietnam.
What happened to that vision? The war itself, and, as MLK,Jr., said, economic inequality and racism at home. The US
was not supporting democracy and self-determination. It had opposed the popular will of the
Vietnamese in numerous says, including supporting France’s bloody imperial
occupation (1946-54); setting up the Catholic puppet leader Ngo Dinh Diem in Buddhist
S. Vietnam in 1955; cancelling nationwide elections in 1956 because Ho would
have won; building a non-Communist S. 7Vietnam when the majority had supported
Ho Chi Minh against the French and then against Diem. The US, proclaiming itself the leader of
the Free World, had forced the Vietnamese majority to turn to violence for its
self-determination.
And they were met with the fire-power of
the most powerful military force in history—more bomb tonnage than during WWII,
millions killed and injured by indiscriminate destruction not only by bombs but
also by napalm, artillery, chemical defoliants, automatic weapons,
grenades. And the US forced millions of Vietnamese into
camps. In one round-up in 1967, six
thousand rural peasants, two-thirds of them children, were made US prisoners,
called “refugees fleeing Communism.”
Altogether the US drove “more than five million South Vietnamese off
their land—roughly one-third of the population. . . .victims of one of the
largest forced relocations in history” (29).
Succeeding chapters flesh out the
catastrophe (except for all the other species killed, tortured, and dislocated,
a book not yet written about any of our wars):
Part I: “Why Are We in Vietnam?” to show how the official
rationalizations for the US War Against Vietnam, especially that of US
exceptionalism, were shattered by the horrendous cruelty of the invaders; Part
II: “America at War” to trace US unexceptional war-making: the physical brutality
of US troops, the moral harms to US soldiers themselves, and the movement to
stop the war; Part III: “What Have We Become?” to assay the legacy of the war
by “exceptional” USA.
The penultimate chapter, ironically
entitled “No More Vietnams,” ends with the story of President Clinton’s Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright, when asked
by Lesley Stahl on Sixty Minutes in 1996 whether
the death of a half-million Iraqi children because of the sanctions was worth
it, Albright replied, “we think the price is worth it.” The final chapter, “Who We Are” summarizes
our record as a nation and culture and the reckoning that had been building
since the opening pages. In 2002
following the invasion of Iraq, President G. W. Bush declared: “Our nation is
the greatest force for good in history,” and now Iraq is decimated and torn in
half. In 2013 President Obama said, “If
you want to know who we are, what America is, how we respond to evil—that’s
it. Selflessly. Compassionately. Unafraid.”
And Afghanistan is Vietnam. These
and over forty interventions and invasions since 1945 have “explicitly violated
long-established U.S. and international law.
More than that, they fundamentally contradicted a core principle of
American exceptionalism—the belief that the United States adheres to a higher
ethical standard than other nations. Since
WWII the series of senseless, stupid, vicious wars initiated by the US has so
turned on its head the patriotic fairy tale of national exceptionalism that not
the troops or the executive and congressional leaders represent who we are, but
the parents of killed and physically or mentally maimed US soldiers—of Paul
Meadlo, or Alexander Arredondo, or Casey Sheehan, or other members of Gold Star
Families for Peace.
What to do with such a judgement? “. . .to seek the fuller reckoning of our
role in the world that the Vietnam War so powerfully awakened—to confront the
evidence of what we have done. It is our
record; it is who we are” (335).
MASSCHUSETTS REVIEW
AMERICAN RECKONING: THE VIETNAM WAR AND OUR NATIONAL IDENTITY
by Christian Appy. Viking, 2015.
Review by Blogger
Doug Anderson.
Christian Appy's new book, American Reckoning, is a brilliant and readable synthesis of all
previous thinking about the Vietnam War plus deep insights into the inner
workings of the powers behind the war, especially what the American people were
not privy to at the time. The war had gone sour for LBJ and key members of his
administration long before anybody knew about it. The war had become unwinnable
but simultaneously unendable.
Appy recounts a moment when Lyndon Johnson, badgered by
reporters to explain why we continued to fight a war that was plainly
unwinnable, “the president unzipped his fly, drew out his substantial organ,
and declared, ‘This is why.’” This was typical of LBJ’s Aristophanic
self-expression but it was also a metaphor Freud would have loved—revealing
what American power thought of itself and its assumed place in the world.
Johnson and his key players thought that a withdrawal from Vietnam would signal
weakness to the rest of the world.
Appy is particularly astute about Vietnam Veterans, a
demographic still largely misunderstood by the American public. All combat
troops, whatever their politics, had the following experience. They were taught
to believe that we were fighting a noble war to prevent the innocent South
Vietnamese from being overrun by the godless communist hoards from the north.
They arrived in country and quickly discovered that the Vietnamese civilians
were in on the game. True, many Vietnamese, especially those who remembered the
French, merely wanted to be left alone by both sides, but eighty percent of the
country was pro-NLF. When Diem, the president we had installed in Saigon
realized this, he canceled elections. This structural oversight on the part of
the war's architects was responsible for a lot of dead Americans and
Vietnamese.
Ground troops were continually walking into ambushes and
stepping on mines in close proximity to villages and were quick to assume that
the villagers knew about the mines and the enemy presence. If a farmer walks over the same paddy dike
for a week and doesn't step on the mine and then an American does, soldiers and
marines assumed the villagers were working for the enemy. Often, they were. In
any case, by the time I arrived in Vietnam in 1967 the hostility toward the
Vietnamese in general was extreme. The war became a matter of staying alive for
American ground troops and any notions of a noble cause had flown. The
reprisals against the civilian population were often fierce.
Most of the American servicemen in Vietnam were decent human
beings who had inherited their military service identity from their World War
II-generation parents, a belief that the US was the world's eternal good guy
always doing the right thing and helping out the underdog. We had stopped Tojo
and Hitler, after all. The fall from grace of this generation of men was to
have devastating consequences. The My Lai massacre brought attention to the
problem of civilian casualties and revealed that it wasn't only mass killings
like My Lai: the brutal treatment of civilians was a daily occurrence.
The next nightmare was the relocation of entire village
populations to large camps called "strategic hamlets," and the
chemical defoliation of known enemy sanctuaries that became known as "free
fire zones." The affects of these relocations and the chemical spraying
destroyed most of the rice crop and mid-war, Vietnam, known for its rice, was
having to import it. Appy's tracking of the stages of the continuing disaster
is quite convincing: idiocy after idiocy, bungle after bungle, all the way to
"Vietnamization" and the ignominious exit of the Americans in 1975.
Appy follows the troops home to their dismal reception.
Incidents of returning soldiers being spit on and called baby killers were very
rare. What most troops faced was indifference, disgust or embarrassment. In
some cases they were literally shunned.
They were not welcomed. They were
further stigmatized as drug addicts and psychopaths. For a while during the seventies every time a
television series needed a psycho they created a character that was a Vietnam
veteran.
After the initial shaming of homecoming troops, Ronald Reagan
and his administration tried to resuscitate them as victims. The memory of the
war had sufficiently subsided enough for veterans to be recast as men who, if
they had been allowed to fight the war, if they hadn't been undermined by
student protests, would have won. Most veterans rejected both roles—loser or
hero—and watched in amazement while they were reconstructed for political
purposes.
The American right has been trying to make Vietnam go away
for nearly a half century. The week
after the first invasion of Iraq in 1991, George H. W. Bush declared that the
"Vietnam Syndrome" was over.
The slick media packaging of the invasion with lots of exploding
ordnance was meant to kick off a new era in which the US would be restored to
its position as supreme power. Bush the
Second began two wars that were supposed to kick the ball further down
field. In both cases, they failed, and
Vietnam, is still very much with us.
The Vietnam War was an opportunity for the US to question and
revise its national identity in ways that could have avoided much of the
violence that continues now in the Middle East. With the swing toward the right
since Reagan it has done the opposite, and the GOP in particular has become
downright arterially sclerotic in its insistence that the country be restored
to its pre Vietnam idea of itself. That will never happen, and they just
continue to dig the grave deeper.
Appy has subsumed most of the previous books—from Michael
Herr's Dispatches to Frances
Fitzgerald's Fire in the Lake, to
Neil Sheehan's A Bright and Shining Lie—into
a brilliant analysis of a war doomed from the get-go. He has exhaustively
interviewed people, dug around in the Library of Congress, and woven it all
into a vigorous and gracefully written argument. Let's hope he finds an
audience beyond the well-preached-to choir. A joke-meme is gathering momentum
online, sometimes appearing as a cartoon, with the following caption: “Those
who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do study history
are doomed to sit around and watch other people repeat it.”
Doug Anderson is the author of the memoir Keep Your Head Down, as well as several
collections of poetry, including The Moon
Reflected Fire. His poem "Seventy" appears in the current issue
of MR.
Also see the excellent review by Bill Griffin
in The Catholic Worker (June-July
2015). I wasn’t able to find
it online in order to forward to you.
The book “focuses on US imperialism in the post Second World War era and
the civic religion of American exceptionalism,” which Appy exposes as “a
dangerous myth.”
The Vietnam War: From Fulbright to Turse and Appy by Dick
Bennett
Fulbright learned to abhor the Vietnam
War. The feelings prompted him to
consider how, had he been more effective, he might have prevented the war, as
he explains in The Price of Empire. First, he would have negotiated with Ho Chi
Minh from the beginning. Ho had asked Truman’s State Department in 1946
to assist him in modeling his constitution on our institutions, but his
messages were not answered. The State
Department’s Secretary Acheson, a Cold Warrior, thought Ho under the control of
communist masters. In 1965 Fulbright
suggested to Pres. Johnson and Secretary McNamara that a Vietnam under Ho
should be acceptable to the US. He
compared Ho to Tito of Yugoslavia, an independent communist to whom the US had
sent aid. Fulbright condemns, as he does
repeatedly in this book, this mindless, dogmatic anticommunist mentality
dominating US leaders (122).
Second, he would have accepted the Geneva
accords in 1954. “It is quite possible”
that had Eisenhower allowed the elections to proceed according to the accords
“the whole course of our history would have been different.” Polls showed Ho would have won by 80%. The US professed to believe in
self-determination. But the US blocked
the vote and “the brutalization that later took place because of the war”
ensued. Why? “. . .because it didn’t suit us” to adhere to
an agreement with evil communism (110).
Had we followed the accords “Vietnam could have been an Asian
Yugoslavia” (127).
That history leads Fulbright to another of
several repudiations of US exceptionalism.
“The question is, what have we learned
from Vietnam?” And his answer is, thinking of the aggressions perpetrated by
the US between the Vietnam War and 1989, “apparently little or nothing. Yet there is much that we should have learned,
above all that we, as a nation, are no more immune than the great powers of the
past from the arrogance of power.” Had
we learned that lesson, we would have escaped the great anticommunist obsession
and “the futile quest for primacy” that had gripped the country for over forty
years.
He concludes the chapter, “Vietnam
Revisited,” with this rebuke of the arrogance of believing one’s own nation to
be exceptional beyond all others: “There
is no greater human vanity than the belief that one’s own values have universal
validity, no greater folly than the attempt to impose the preference of a
single society on an unwilling world.”
At the time, Fulbright had only slightly
glimpsed the brutality we now know occurred.
The evidence has accumulated steadily since the end of the war. And in 2015, Nick Turse wrote Kill Everything that Moves.
WITH LEADERS LIKE THESE
HENRY KISSINGER AND EXCEPTIONAL US HARM AGAINST OTHERS. Democracy
Now (Sept. 2, 2015)
“With a Record Backing Coups, Secret War &
Genocide, Is Kissinger an Elder Statesman or War Criminal?”
Four decades after Henry Kissinger left office, his influence
on the national security state can still be widely felt, as the United States
engages in declared and undeclared wars across the globe. Kissinger served as
national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford
administrations and helped revive a
militarized version of American exceptionalism. We speak with Greg Grandin,
author of the new book, Kissinger’s
Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman. MORE
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/9/2/with_a_record_backing_coups_secret?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21&utm_campaign=6a27ca52ae-Daily_Digest&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa2346a853-6a27ca52ae-191542425
Gen. Manuel Contreras, died in August 2015. He led the atrocious spy agency that
kidnapped, tortured, and killed thousands during Chile’s military dictatorship,
following the murder of President Salvador Allende in a coup partly organized
by the CIA. According to an official
report, 40,018 people were imprisoned, tortured, or slain during the 1973-1980
dictatorship,” which Pres. Nixon and
Secretary Henry Kissinger helped to
establish. –Dick (from AP report
“General, Spy Chief in Chile Dictatorship,” Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette 8-7-15).
US
Exceptional Dark Sides
 |
|
Mass Shootings Dubbed the
'Dark Side of American Exceptionalism'
by Nadia Prupis. Common Dreams, August 30, 2015. Firearm ownership is an underlying factor, but many mass shootings may be motivated by the 'lost American dream'. |
FDR’S
IMAGINED FOUR FREEDOMS THE REAL EXCEPTIONALISM
April 11, 2014 | Moyers &
Company
Historian Harvey J. Kaye
talks to Bill about why FDR’s “Four Freedoms” — freedom from fear and want and
freedom of speech and religion — are more important now than ever. Read Kaye’s The Fight for the Four Freedoms (2014). The real US exceptionalism is its struggle
for the values and organization of the New Deal from the 1930s to the 1970s.
The Myth of American
Exceptionalism Google Search, 2-19-17
foreignpolicy.com/2011/10/11/the-myth-of-american-exceptionalism/
Oct 11, 2011 - The Myth of American
Exceptionalism « | Foreign Policy | the Global Magazine of News and
Ideas.
https://www.amazon.com/Myth-American-Exceptionalism-Godfrey.../030016419X
The Myth of American
Exceptionalism [Godfrey Hodgson] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on
qualifying offers. The idea that the United States is destined
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/.../the-myth-of-american-exceptionalism
Nov 9, 2016 - Donald J. Trump was the
most spectacularly unqualified major-party presidential nominee in American history. A lazy,
self-absorbed political ...
www.salon.com/.../3_desperate_ways_the_u_s_clings_to_the_myth_of_american_exc...
Oct 1, 2015 - The American empire has been
reduced to dust. All that remains is the stale jingoism of our Republican
candidates.
www.globalresearch.ca/debunking-the-myth-of-american-exceptionalism/5477634
Sep 23, 2015 - The myth of American
Exceptionalism is widely, but perhaps insincerely, believed by most
American thought-leaders and political and ...
People also ask
What is the concept of American
exceptionalism?
Who came up with the term
American exceptionalism?
What it means to be an American?
What is Exceptionalist?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/...myth_of_american_exceptionalism/.../AF2rm0bG...
May 9, 2011 - The emblem of this culture
is the term “American
exceptionalism.” It has been adopted by the right to mean that America, alone
among the ...
www.huffingtonpost.com/byron.../the-myth-of-american-exce_b_8881132.html
Dec 27, 2015 - The Myth of American
Exceptionalism and the Uniqueness of America. By Byron Williams. There is
a recurring theme throughout the 2016 ...
www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-gene.../the-myth-of-american-exce_b_3928673.ht...
Sep 15, 2013 - The Myth of American
Exceptionalism. By Michael Gene Sullivan. 350. “Patriotism is, fundamentally,
a conviction that a particular country is the ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
American exceptionalism is
one of three related ideas. The first is that the history of the United ... Why
has the myth
of American exceptionalism, characterized by a belief in America's highly distinctive
features or unusual trajectory based on the ...
Contents
of #1 April 26, 2011
Exceptional in
Advantages—David Morris
US Fantasies by
Donald Pease (book)
And Human
Rights—Dick
Double
Standards—Amy Goodman
Economic Myth
Implodes--Richard Wolff
Books: Bacevich
Contents
of #2 September 26, 2013
President Obama
Lapham, Death
of US Exceptionalism
William Blum,
Survey of Opinions from Fulbright to Albright
Engelhardt,
Ironical Examples of US Exceptionalism, History of the Idea, and more
Piatt, Christian Exceptionalism
Pfaff, Manifest Destiny
Monbiot, Double Standards of US Exceptionalism
Google Search
END EXCEPTIONALISM NEWSLETTER #3
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