When I was very little my mother spoke to me about the importance of friendship. “After your mammy and daddy are gone,” she would say, “your friends will mind you and help you to be good and keep out of trouble.” Taking her at her word, I put a lot of effort into my friendships, and probably thought more about these relationships than most small boys growing up in the suburbs of 1970’s and 1980’s Dublin (for 1980’s Dublin, read: no jobs, no money, little hope). And over the years, I have had many wonderful friendships, some enduring, some passing and some cut short by a foolish row or other abbreviating event. Now, as a man, I am blessed with wonderful friends – decent, caring people who I know are there when I need them. Whether my good fortune in this regard is due to careful cultivation, arising from my mother’s advice, or sheer good luck, I don’t know. But I do know that when my parents are no more, my friends will mind me and keep me out of trouble.
Thoughts of this recently brought to mind America’s current standing in the world – and the actions of the present administration. This country has been abandoning its friends as if there was an infinite supply. Relationships nurtured over generations have been cast aside in the race to war, in the race to occupation and in the race to demonise the innocent (France, for example). Friendships forged in the heat of America’s gallantry in WWII have been swept aside in a heart-beat. Millions, raised on the history of Nazism’s failure, and the realpolitic of the cold war, are starting to think the previously unthinkable: Could it be that America is actually the bad guy?
All around the world, people had happily appropriated the American Dream as their dream – freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This meant something to them, something to hope for and believe in.
A lot of them have stopped believing.
And as the US has stopped listening to its friends, they have stopped listening to the US – statements from the White House are now received with little more than derision. Bush has become a figure of fun. But, deep down, no one is truly laughing – they are afraid. Afraid of what is happening in the world, afraid of what is to come.
Put simply, they are afraid of America.
Equally worrying for the millions who deplore US actions are the new friendships America has been forming. Pakistan, for example – yet another dictatorship which suits America’s current purpose.
In the past, US support for terrible men (Pol Pot, et al) was generally brushed-over with phrases like “cold-war politics” or “the fight against communism.” But now this history is being re-examined, in the light of current events.
I doubt that ordinary Americans have any idea of how much anger there is towards them globally and, frankly, I think they would be shocked. Americans are, by and large, hard-working, decent people. But they seem totally unaware of the consequences of their voting decisions – US television news certainly wont enlighten them, or even inform them. It has become part of the plan, part of the “war on terror.”
When Bush says “freedom is on the march” they report this, but for millions it is not on the march – and US support for the regimes standing between those millions and their liberty is rarely portrayed as such.
In Europe, people want Americans to take charge and hold their officials vigorously to account. Their failure in this respect shocks and disturbs. People of the world know that millions of Americans support what is happening, but that millions are disgusted by it. Those that see the badness in current US foreign policy either have no voice, or will not speak.
For very many years, America has been an aspirational culture for people everywhere. As a boy, I wanted to be an American kid with all of the privilege that suggests. As a younger man, I held a fascination for the “American Project” of liberty and freedom. Now, like many, I am disillusioned. Like many, I now question the truth of that project. Like many, I now no longer consider America a friend.
For millions of people across the globe, this is now the case – they no longer care for America, no longer believe in America and no longer aspire to what they view as America’s corrupted ideals. Even in Britain, the partner in “the war on terror,” the vast majority of people are appalled by what Bush and Blair have done and are sickened by the consequences.
It is a tragedy that in a few short years President Bush has turned a friend of nations into a friendless nation. And he does so without an appreciation of history or even, seemingly, current events.
Perhaps the truest definition of unilateral is, simply, friendless.
