by
Fred Reed

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Your Papers, Citizen

TSA
I bet this won’t surprise you.

The United
States is the most hated country in the world, followed closely
by Israel, and then by nobody. Why? Why not Ecuador? China? Russia?
East Timor? The hostility puzzles many Americans, who genuinely
believe their country to be a force for good, a pillar of democracy,
a defender of human rights.

To the rest
of the world, none of this is even close.

If you have
lived abroad, as so very few Americans have, the explanation for
the hatred is obvious: Meddling. Relentless, prideful, uncomprehending
meddling, frequently military, often with horrendous death tolls.
Americans, adroitly managed by a controlled press, historically
illiterate, incurious, decreasingly educated, either have never
heard of the American behavior that angers others, or believe it
to have been inspired by virtuous motives. Nobody else thinks so.
Add to unfamiliarity with the wider world the constantly inculcated
assertion that America is the greatest, most wonderful nation ever
to exist, a light to the world, a shining city on a hill, and you
get a dangerously delusional state. Especially now. In the past,
American economic and military supremacy were such that the US didnÂ’t
have to care what others thought. The times, they are a-changing.

It might be
wise to compare briefly the view through American and foreign eyes.
Consider Iraq. To most of the world, the war on Iraq was brutal,
unprovoked, and murderous. More than a few, looking at the ruins
of Fallujah, thought of Guernica – of which few in the States
have ever heard.

Many Americans
do not believe that we destroyed Iraq for oil, empire, and the Israel
lobby, as was in fact the case. No. We wanted to topple an evil
dictator and dispense the precious gift of democracy. It was a question
of goodness. Many apparently still believe that Iraq had something
to do with the attacks on New York. Again, controlled press, poor
schooling, little curiosity.

Similarly,
Americans tend to see the war on Afghanistan as having to do with
ending Terror or sprouting democracy – not as the Great Game
(“Hanh?”) redux, or the quest for the TAPI pipeline (“Say
whuh?”) or Caspian hydrocarbons. (“Caspian? You mean the
Friendly Ghost?”) To most of the world, Afghanistan is just
another sorry spectacle of American fighter-bombers killing peasants,
of gutted children and drone attacks on half-identified targets.
This, the merciless use of overwhelming firepower against lightly
armed campesinos, is what the world sees, over and over. Vietnam,
Cambodia, Laos, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan. It isnÂ’t pretty.

I live in Mexico.
In countless towns, probably in every city of any size, you see
streets named Niños Heroes, Heroic Children. In Guadalajara
there is a traffic circle with an imposing monument to them. These
things commemorate the children who tried to fight the American
soldiers invading Mexico City. In that (purely acquisitive) war
Mexico lost half its territory. Yet how many gringos know that it
ever happened, or when, or for that matter have ever heard of the
bombardment of Veracruz or PershingÂ’s incursion?

Americans who
have some grasp of history sometimes say of the Mexican-American
War that Mexicans should “get over it.” Some might tell
the Jews to get over the Holocaust, or Americans to get over 9/11.
It is much easier to tell people to get over what you have done
to them than to get over things they have done to you.

Then there
is the War on Drugs. Americans believe this to be a campaign against
Evil – best conducted, of course, in other people’s countries.

There are other
views. Thoughtful Mexicans (all I know, but I havenÂ’t taken
a poll) do not see why drugs are MexicoÂ’s problem. If gringos
donÂ’t want drugs, why do they buy them? Why donÂ’t they
solve their own problems? It is no secret internationally that American
students in high school and universities use drugs. Why donÂ’t
the Americans put their college kids in jail? And, they say, probably
correctly, that Washington, by sponsoring the elimination of big
drug lords, caused the current fighting among littler lords to control
the trade, thus creating carnage. Predictably, the flow of drugs
northward was not affected.

Truculent patriots
at Billy BobÂ’s Rib Pit know none of this. The combination of
clueless ignorance and a sort of Walmart-parking-lot arrogance make
mysterious to them much behavior of other countries. Consider their
view of Iran, an evil Arab country, somewhere, that wants the Bomb
so it can blow up Israel and New York. No explanation occurs to
them for IranÂ’s hostility to the US, which wants regime change
so Iranians can be democratic and have freedoms. Ask Billy Bobbers
whether they have even heard of, much less been in, major Iranian
cities like Tehran, Sulawesi, Sidon, or Tbilisi. No. Yet they are
sure the inhabitants are dangerous and un-American.

Iranians may
perhaps see things differently. They know that in 1953 the democratically
elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadeg (“Mossy what?”
they ask in the Rib Pit.) was overthrown by the CIA leaving the
Shah (“Is that, like, a person?”), a routinely ghastly
dictator, in control. This had much to do with the occupation of
the US embassy in 1979, which was sold in the US as evidence of
the badness of Iranians.

Later, in 1988,
the US Navy, in the form of the USS Vincennes, shot down
an Iranian airliner and killed everyone aboard. Americans shrugged
it off: Such things were doubtless necessary to stop terrorism.
But imagine the outrage if the Iranian navy shot down a US airliner.

Nobody beyond
the borders buys our song about spreading freedom and human rights.
America has supported countless sordid dictators ruling by army
and torture chamber (the Saudis being a current example). We have
put many dictators on their thrones, such as Pinochet (“That
little wooden guy, his nose got long when he told a lie, right?”)
in Chile. (“Isn’t that Tex-Mex soup with beans in it?”)
Others notice that the only country that openly and proudly tortures
prisoners isÂ…us.

Always, the
underlying problem is meddling. Bin LadenÂ’s guys didnÂ’t
attack New York because it was a slow morning and they couldnÂ’t
think of anything else to do. They were furious at US meddling in
Moslem lands. You may think, and I may think, that Islam is a primitive
faith not well adapted to the modern world. Fine. I may think that
hornets do not have an ideal social organization. But I know better
than to poke their nest.

This is why
they hate us – meddling, bombing, invading, droning, telling
them how to run their countries. No, George, it is not because of
our freedoms.

March
12, 2013

Fred Reed
is author of Nekkid
in Austin: Drop Your Inner Child Down a Well, A
Brass Pole in Bangkok: A Thing I Aspire to Be, Curmudgeing
Through Paradise: Reports from a Fractal Dung Beetle, Au
Phuc Dup and Nowhere to Go: The Only Really True Book About Viet
Nam, and A
Grand Adventure: Wisdom’s Price-Along with Bits and Pieces about
Mexico. Visit his
blog.

Copyright
© 2013 Fred Reed

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