Re: America's cover imperialism
Reader comment on: The Imperial Appetite
in response to reader comment: AMERICA'S COVERT IMPERIALISM

Submitted by Frankly Speaking, Feb 9, 2008 22:19

self-delusion on both an individual and collective basis is crucial for the human psyche. Russians remain proud of the might of the Soviet empire, which was as evil and corrupt as anything imaginable. the japanese refused to surrender after the first atomic bomb and many generals argued vehemently to not surrender after the second bomb. how many of their citizens were they willing to sacrifice to their superiority complex? you are writing from germany with such smug condescension, but how many times did that country try to conquer much of the world in the past 100 years? of course the french are well-known for their cultural modesty... my point is that americans are no worse than people in other countries. at least we admit our mistakes. how many americans defend vietnam? has the history of slavery been swept from view? how many countries scrupulously investigate their own misdeeds to the degree that america does? the massacres in Iraq, in vietnam, cambodia, etc... to this day the japanese won't apologize for subjugating women into sexual slavery in WW2. the "comfort women." what a euphemism! do the chinese reconcile with their own history? How many did Mao massacre? some estimate 100 million... how about stalin? Have russians reconciled his genocide of tens of millions of Ukrainians? don't mistake this for a defense of america's sins. but after all, we are about to elect a black man or a woman for president. do we have racism and sexism? of course. are we honest about it? yes, it must not be so bad if we can choose them to lead our country. We have a free and open society, there is nothing covert about our so-called imperialism. everyone with half an education knows about it so how can it be covert? besides, our imperialism is largely cultural. if we were true imperialists in the historical sense we'd simply take control of the saudi arabia, kuwait, iran, iraq etc... as the british did in the 19th century over much of the world. such things are not possible anymore, and i'm sure that's good in some ways, but if you were realistic you'd also realize that if we did do that, most of the people in those countries would enjoy a much higher standard of living. there'd be a middle class and a diverse economy and civil rights. no one wants to be ruled over by foreigners and i'm not suggesting they'd be better off in some absolute sense, but there would be benefits to good government (which they don't have) and the equality and rule of law that would come with American administration. (are you familiar with how women are treated in many of these countries?) no country/culture is perfect. certainly not america's, but we have self-correcting and reconciling mechanisms built into our culture. that is both why and how "We the people..." which started out as property owning white men, gradually grew to enfranchise women and African Americans. because the mechanisms for universal franchise and legal rights were put in place from the beginning.

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