America's Worst Enemy Is Itself
By Our Man in Newcastle, Greasy Jesus

In the somber days and weeks after the terrorist outrages that occurred just over one year ago in New York and Washington, many US citizens, in a state of shock and disbelief, asked the question, "Why does so much of the rest of the world hate America so much?" By contrast, the question many foreigners, especially in the so-called Third World, have long been asking, is "Why does America hate us so much?" By understanding the reasons for the latter query, we can find an answer to the former one as well.

Taking its stated principles at face value, it is indeed difficult to understand how any rational individual could hate America. The ideology at America's foundation declares that "all men are created equal," with an inherent "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Notice that the phrase used is "all men", not "all Americans." It is a universal statement, with implications not just for one nation but for mankind as a whole.

This universality is what French revolutionaries in 1789 found so inspiring about the American example when they overthrew their own tyrannical King Louis XVI. The Latin American revolutionaries of the 1800s who threw off the yoke of Spanish colonial rule similarly looked to America's example. Even Ho Chi Minh is famously said to have quoted the Declaration of Independence before launching Vietnam's armed struggle for national self-determination against, ironically, the French and the Americans. Yet the American political and economic elite has for much of modern history been acting as if these ideals, which the founding fathers espoused as universal, are only applicable to Americans, and even then only to those Americans at the top of the social and economic pyramid.

To say the least, America's words and deeds appear inconsistent.
How could a truly righteous and just nation espouse such lofty ideals, yet support - and sometimes even install - regimes that have repressed, tortured and killed their own citizens in Chile, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, etc? How could a nation that believes in such principles prop up the Shah of Iran, the authoritarian government of Egypt and the anti-democratic absolutist monarchy of Saudi Arabia? Or give money and arms to an Israeli state pursuing a ruthless (and ironic) policy of lebensraum? How could such a nation control an IMF and World Bank that adopts policies which destroy indigenous farming in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America and which turns the citizens of those regions into slaves in all but name?

On the one hand, former president Ronald Reagan cited America as "a shining city on a hill," an example the rest of the world could turn to for inspiration, while at the same time his administration were supplying the bullets, guns and bombs to some of the world's most oppressive and anti-libertarian regimes and movements.

Nor has it made much difference whether the Republicans or the Democrats have occupied the White House. Under John F. Kennedy, the US sponsored the Bay of Pigs debacle to attempt to bring Cuba back into its (and the mafia's) sphere of influence. Under Bill Clinton's administration, to cite but one example of economic imperialism, America manipulated trade liberalization regulations first to destroy Jamaica's native dairy industry, which provided the island's people with fresh milk, then to make the country dependent on lesser quality powdered milk imported from the US.
The current Bush II administration gives material aid and moral approval to the quasi-fascist, extreme nationalist Sharon government in Israel, has installed a government in Afghanistan that is dominated not by committed reformers but by mass-murdering warlords, and supports a military dictatorship in Pakistan which replaced a doubtlessly-flawed-but-nevertheless-democratically-elected government in a coup d'etat. And yet still the US touts itself as the spiritual home of "liberty and justice for all."

This blatant hypocrisy - the gap between expressed ideals and manifest deeds - is exactly why so many people around the world harbor such a virulent hatred for America. Palestinians who've had their land confiscated and their houses bulldozed by an American-backed Israeli regime that blatantly ignores numerous UN resolutions, Jamaicans who've had their businesses destroyed by US corporate and agricultural policies, victims of state-sponsored torture in Latin America and the Middle East and any number of predominantly brown-skinned people who've lost limbs and/or loved ones to American bombing campaigns understandably have a different perspective on what America really represents.

The sad thing is that a large percentage of Americans, were they to switch off their sitcoms, "infotainment" and 24-hour sports programming for five seconds and consider what's being done around the world in their good name, would doubtlessly be just as outraged as the citizens of those many nations around the globe that American corporate and/or military power continues to rape and abuse. These Americans, I am convinced, would demand change from their government so that the nation's foreign policy might finally match its lofty words.

The American capitalist elite may be evil and manipulative but the American people as a whole are, I believe, still kind-hearted and good intentioned. For evidence, one need only look at the tremendous amount of charitable giving that flows from the US annually. Which brings me to a very important point: America itself is not inherently evil. America's ideals as expressed in the nation's founding documents - the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - are indeed representative of humanity's greatest ideals: freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of choice and the right to liberty and justice for all. Who can seriously argue with that? Yet American actions, directed by a greedy and aggressive capitalist elite, not only betray such ideals but also are responsible for the incredible volume of hatred directed at America in many parts of the world. It's time America woke up to this and acted to redress the balance between what it says it believes in and what it actually does.

Greasy Jesus
Sez...

He's got nothing to lose.

This is why we fight.

America hates itself.

USA is invading Europe.