Us and Them (And the Ever-Thining Line)

What makes us "us"? It is human nature to focus on differences, however overwhelmingly trivial those differences may be in the broader scheme of things. This is how the human mind orders the universe, and it is born of practicality rather than ingorance or bigotry. For example, how do I distinguish my father from any other man I may meet? Well, I know what my father looks like, and every other man looks....different. If my mind was not preconditioned to focus on differences, my universe would consist of a monochromatic mass without depth, color, or contrast.

This is the purely physical and pracitcal manifestation of "difference". We practice another variation of this tendency as well. This second manifestation allows us to use broad strokes to classify whole cultures and civilization as being "different" from us. Again, this is a necessary impulse, but it can quickly lead to delusion.

I have no time for moral relativism. I have no time for those who compare George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler, or Jerry Falwell to Osama bin Laden. While I would not care to have a beer with any of these men, they are not equally venal. There is no moral equivalence between Bush's decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and Hitler's decision to exterminate European Jewry. There is no moral equivalence between Falwell's blaming 9/11 on gays and bin Laden's ordering 9/11 in the first place.

If there were moral equalities between these men, there would be no point in sacrificing anything in the interest of destroying them, and rest assured, the world is better off because Hitler was defeated. And if we could ever find bin Laden, that would be a good thing too.

There is, however, an inherent danger in this drawing of the lines. Americans are uniquely predisposed to assume that they are not just better, but the best, with little if any room for critique or improvement. Americans find it easier than any other people on Earth to say with total assurance, "I live in the greatest country on Earth". When you are blindly convinced that you are morally superior to your enemies, as well as your allies, for that matter, you run the risk of no longer vigilantly guarding that superiority.

How was it that indiscriminate arrest and torture became a matter of policy for the United States in Iraq? Well, if we are better than everyone else, and if we would never use such tactics, then we can actually use them while simultaneously denying that we are doing so. I wrote in an earlier blog about an American soldier in Iraq who tortured detainees, 90% of whom he deemed innocent of any wrongdoing, by forcing them to crouch outside over night depriving them of the luxury of walking without pain for the rest of their lives. He convinced himself that we wasn't torturing these men by saying to himself, as he tortured these men, "I'm an American, and Americans don't torture". But, we do.

All that being said, there is still a real distinction between us and our enemy. Our enemy, we maintain, has no respect for the sanctity of life. We, by inference, value human life more than they do. I agree with this assertion in general, but I believe that Americans are far too willing to blindly buy into this idea without really examining the things that their country is willing to do.

In "The War of Ideas", Walid Phares tries to elucidate these differences. While he does an elegant job of articulating our enemy's worldview, he pays no heed to the rather thick tongue in the rather thin cheek of his assertions.

"The Jihadists have awarded themselves full discretion over the life and death of every person on Earth"

Fair enough. True jihadists do invest themselves with the right to kill whoever they choose. But here's the more salient fact; the United States has not only arrogated to itself the exact same discretion, it has mobilized its wealth and talent to give physical capability to that discretion. The United States, not the jihadists, holds 30,000 hydrogen bombs, which would kill every living thing on Earth before half of them were used. There aren't enough planes and buildings for the jihadists to accomplish 1% of that.

Now, we may argue that if jihadists had the destructive capacity of the United States, they would not hesitate to instigate a global holocaust. Perhaps. But that does not change the fact that their "full discretion over the life and death of every person on Earth" is theoretical, while ours is very, very real. We are the ones who have actualized this psychotic urge. We are the ones who could literally kill every person on Earth at a moment's notice. If that was all you knew about the United States, would the United States not warrant attack, or at least resistance?

"If a suicide bomber or jihadi isn't convinced that Allah has ordered him...that person has no reason to kill"

How many Americans feel that "Allah has ordered" them to kill? And yet, do we not kill in prodigious numbers? Do we not slaughter ourselves in the tens of thousands every year on the streets of our cities? Do we not slaughter Muslims in the tens of thousands in the interest of "peace" or "liberation"? Who has ordered us to kill? Not Allah. Perhaps our inate sense of superiority gives the order.

When Americans kill overseas, they insist that they kill for peace, and that each and every one of the tens upon tens of thousands of civilians that are killed are individual "regrettable accidents" because, God knows, we would never "target civilians". The above quote insinuates that Muslims would not kill if were not for Allah, and that if Muslims did not kill, the United States would not be forced to kill in response. But who were we "responding" to when we invaded Iraq? What person in that devastated land had come to kill us on Allah's orders?

"The international community, after centuries of bloody wars and revolutions, has reached the global consensus that countries, civilizations, and cultures should not have aims of world dominance"

In truth, vast segments of the world have accepted this idea, and the world is the better for it. The strongest, however, have not accepted this, and laws are only strong if the strong follow the laws. Has the United States renounced the "aims of world dominance"? No. In fact, if you read the National Security Strategy of 2002 and 2006, published by the very government of the United States, we are very unabashed about our goal of guarding against the emergence of any potential rival and the permanent securing of "full-spectrum dominance". But, again, we're not really trying to take over the world, because we're Americans, and Americans don't do that kind of thing. Everyone knows that.

Hitler was trying to "take over the world" when he took over central and western Europe. We, on the other hand, are not trying to take over the world, despite the fact that we have military garrisons in well over 100 nations.

"After Hitler, Mussolini, Japan's imperialism, and Soviet Communism, open declarations of missions to subdue, occupy, or obliterate neighbors or other nations are not accepted"

Again, not accepted by who? We certainly accept these things, which many would maintain are the sole province of tyrants. If we do not accept the occupation of other nations, why have we formally occupied two nations already in this young century? We tell Iraq's neighbors that foreigners must not meddle in Iraq's affairs with apparent lack of irony, but how much more foreign are we to Iraq than the Turks and the Persians, and are we ourselves not "meddling" in Iraq, to put it delicately?

Orwell once said of nationalists that they do not believe in bad actions, only bad actors. And, since the United States is a good actor, its actions must inevitably be the same. Invading and occupying a foreign nation is not a bad action, but when bad actors such as Hitler or Hussein do it, it is wrong. We know it is not an inherently bad action, because when we do it, it is a good thing. Invasion becomes liberation. War becomes peace.

Torture is not a bad action, but when bad actors like Saddam Hussein partake in it, it is worth starting a war over. When we carry out the same action, it is not torture at all, but rather enhanced interogation. This enhanced interogation is carried out in the interest of peace, because the men with nightsticks in their anuses surely would be slaughtering Americans in their beds if they were not otherwise disposed. Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, tortured purely innocent people for his own enjoyment.

I'm not saying the United States is morally equivalent to Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, or Josef Stalin. I am saying that there is such a thing as a wrong action. Some actions are wrong regardless of the protestations of virtue by the actor. And the United States is as capable of being a bad actor as anyone else. Evil begins when we convince ourselves that we are incapable of committing it.