Believing that “nearly everything bad is America’s fault” is an expression of massively inflated American ego.
Now having an inflated idea of just how important one’s own country is is pretty universal, nothing special about Americans. But I felt this sentiment was reaching such a crescendo in this particular topic that I thought it worth pointing out just how egotistical it sounds.
Mmm - maybe. Generally I think one associates egos with positive things. Also, many non-Americans have the sentiment. Though I think overall you’re right there is an over inflated ego with America as a whole.
We’re talking about the actual history of Iraq and the actual career of Saddam Hussein. Is someone making a factually inaccurate claim about either?
And yet, no nuclear weapons were found in Iraq when we invaded… it’s almost like the underlying information was somehow faulty…
It’s not, but our government has routinely ACTED as if the rest of the world was their puppet to do with as they pleased. We did routinely try and manipulate the rest of the world for our own ends - the Soviets did the same. That doesn’t mean that other countries did not actively resist AND exploit that for their own end. Plenty of regional actors tried to manipulate what they knew was American and Soviet attempts to dominant global political and economic strucutures, which led to very volatile and uncertain outcomes. It was American and Soviet hubris in thinking that they could control other countries that was a serious part of the problems that we’re dealing with today.
Every country tries to manipulate the world to its liking and more powerful players will do a lot more influencing. Choosing to exercise that influence doesn’t require one to believe that you are the world’s puppet-master. After all, Canada continually tries to influence the U.S. into acting in ways that benefit our interests. It doesn’t mean that we believe the US is our puppet.
Well, isolationism doesn’t exactly have a great track record of promoting peace and stability either. Once again, I think it’s rather easy to think to fall into the go trap of believing that nothing violent happens unless a great power pushes the situation. Minor powers have agency and thus are more than capable of massive amounts of bloodshed without any help.
To be honest, it’s pretty hard to imagine the counter-factual of American isolationism. Wars tend to start when there is rough power equality and both sides feel like they might win a conflict. America abandoning the field would both increase and decrease the number of such events.
I’d agree that super-power attempts to influence other countries is responsible for much of the current world situation. But again, I’m not so certain that the world situation with American isolationism is any more peaceful - however, it would be different.
(And perhaps most importantly of all, the bloodshed that occurred would not be “our fault”.)
I generally agree with your point. My point is not that the great powers don’t have substantial influence. But statements like “not the CIA installed puppet that he was” really stick in my craw, as if the Iraqi were immaterial to their own country. That is true hubris.
Indeed. In some ways I often find it worse. It’s one thing to believe one’s own nation are the only ‘real people’ with the rest of the world being extras. But when it’s Canadians or Europeans making the claim about the US, at the same time denying that they merely American puppets, it begin to feel not like ‘national’ ego, but ‘racial’ ego, which for ill-defined reasons I find even more discomforting.
[Just to re-iterate, I don’t think American ego in general is out of proportion to their influence. Indeed, I think it’s beat by the Canadian national ego which (at least for my generation) has such a deep belief in its own superiority that it’s considered un-Canadian to actually boast about it. Sadly I think that’s a generational thing.]
It is possible to simultaneously hold the view that:
The Iraqis are an independent people with agency in their own affairs, and
That agency has frequently been overridden by the machinations of external forces.
Who’s denying puppet-tude?
The Australian military function as a nationalised company of mercenaries, whose primary role is to curry favour with our imperial/hegemonic overlords. The last time an Australian government attempted to exercise true independence, MI6 and the CIA had them deposed.
We’re a minor province of the empire. Which makes us partially responsible for its sins.
Not to be a jerk or anything, but the horrors attributed to Saddam – how do they compare with what the USA post-WWII national security state has done in the name preserving and protecting rapacious capitalism?
And the US and Soviets were much more effective in doing it and more influential in doing it. “Everyone does it” isn’t an excuse when you’re a country that can literally wipe humanity off the face of the earth within minutes. Given that much of the choices both made ended up with piles of bodies as a result, it’s not exactly an benign exercise of influence here. But most people don’t care if it happens in the global south to non-white people.
That’s my fault. It should read as high as one million people–I put the story through multiple edits before posting. After looking at it for so long, I wound up missing the error. It’ll be corrected ASAP.
During the Iraq war, some researchers used door-to-door surveys/interviews to estimate the number of dead and quickly figured out the true number is around a million people. They used stratified random sampling, locals to verify the accuracy of their neighborhood maps, and other data to allow the correct adjustments.
I think you have a very low bar for puppet-tude. Does it include any action by a democratically-elected government that aligns with a great power?
Also, thank you for the link on the Whitlam affair. I agree that the government was not properly dismissed. But to pretend that nothing was involved except the desires of Great Britain and the US is incredibly demeaning, as if Australia politics and Australians themselves were not involved.
Discounting the influence of GB and the US would, of course, be a mistake.
But I feel the same way about your take as I do about ‘historical’ films in exotic locales that have only Western characters. Understandable (if regrettable) when produced for a Western domestic film audience. Incomprehensible if coming from someone who presumably understands that his country and countrymen are not a one dimensional extras in the story of their own lives.
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