America in a Hostile World

Anthony Harrigan

Anthony Harrigan, who lives in Washington D.C., has been a freelance writer with decades of experience.

Irrespective of the support or lack of support received by the United States in confronting the threat of weapons of mass destruction possessed by Iraq, it is clear that in years to come the United States often will be forced to stand alone and take unilateral action to ensure its security. The American people will have to accustom themselves to living in a largely hostile world.

This is not the first time in history that a nation and a people have had to go it alone. In the mid-20th century the British found themselves defending civilization almost single handedly against the onslaught of Hitlerite barbarism. The initial allies of Britain were overrun and a substantial part of France, the largest ally in the initial stage of the war-Vichy France-became a puppet of the Nazi regime. It was two years before the United States joined Britain in resistance to the Nazi drive for conquest. At the same time Britain held off the Japanese effort to subjugate the Indian subcontinent.

In the 21st century, the United States is compelled, in the interest of preserving freedom in the world, to pick up many of the burdens shouldered by the British Empire until its devolution two decades after the end of World War II.

The American people need to rid themselves of the idea that all of the post-World War allies are still friends and allies of the United States. Germany is a case in point. America's military campaigns in Europe freed the German people from the mad, brutal regime of the Nazis. During the long years of the cold war, the United States, instead of reverting to isolationism, made the most colossal commitment to saving Germany from being swallowed up by the Soviet Union. In 1948, it risked war with the USSR over Berlin, rescuing Berliners with the airlift. For decades it deployed as many as 300,000 soldiers in Germany. Even in the early fall of 2002, 70,000 American troops were on guard duty in Germany-for the benefit of the German people. Unfortunately, a political majority of the German people have forgotten about gratitude. With the surfacing of a socialist government, the tide of opinion and policy began to turn. And in the most recent election campaign, the Schroeder government adopted an anti-American political strategy. The country's justice minister compared President George Bush to Hitler. A foreign ministry official, Klaus Scharioth described the security policies of President Bush as similar to those of the late Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev. Given these ugly accusations, the American government and people have no reason to regard Germany as an ally.

The case of France is equally instructive. Twice in the last century the United States has saved the skins of the French people, without gaining any gratitude. The United States sacrificed thousands of its sons to liberate France in World War II, despite the collaborationist character of a majority of the French who had largely made their peace with their Nazi occupiers. The French "resistance" was a very limited effort turned into a myth. There was no compelling reason for the United States and its Anglo-Saxon allies to make the costly assault on Normandy-none save Josef Stalin's demand that such an assault be made to diminish the ferocity of German resistance to the westward moving Red army. Winston Churchill had proposed an alternative strategy to defeat Hitler, an attack against what Churchill called "the soft underbelly of Europe"-an assault through the Balkans that could have been carried out at a much lower cost in American, British and Canadian lives. But President Roosevelt yielded to Stalin's insistence. In the decades that followed, Communists and socialists dominated the French government for much of the time and the radicalized French intelligentsia, with a few exceptions, has been consistently anti-American ever since. Even without a socialist government, the French have followed anti-American policies, most recently for French economic advantage in Iraq despite the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This behavior underlines the fact that France is not a true ally of the United States.

The situation with respect to our next-door neighbor is little better. Anti-Americanism has flourished in Canadian political and cultural circles since the arrival of the Trudeau regime a generation ago. Canada has played cozy with Communist Cuba ever since the Trudeau years. And though the Canadian military presence in Afghanistan is welcome, Americans need to understand the influence of the once formidable Canadian military has been whittled away over the past generation. Moreover, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has adopted the Third World political line, telling the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in late September "You cannot exercise your power to the point of humiliation for others." Trevor Rothwell, writing in The Washington Times Oct. 6, 2002, concluded that what Jean Chretien wanted to say was "you Americans had it coming September 11." Mr. Chretien is very clearly in the blame America crowd in the international arena.

During 2002 there were endless insistent demands in Congress, the media and academia that the U.S. obtain the support and endorsement of those supposed allies, former allies, and the "world community"- tyrannical, turbulent, disordered and synthetic nations that make up the UN General Assembly. Clearly, the United States has no need to surrender its sovereign powers to hostile regimes that are incapable of supporting themselves and deprive their own people of basic freedoms. The U.S. would be abdicating its independence if it allowed other nations to veto American actions.

For a very long time, hostility towards the United States has been growing among the nations of the Third World that, ironically, have been the beneficiaries of American largesse. It seems that the more we do for such nations in terms of foreign aid, the more they attack the motives and intentions of the U.S. government. At international gatherings they condemn the American people for not sharing more of their wealth. They are ruled by the politics of envy and insist that an ever-greater share of U.S. resources be given to the nations which are incapable of solving their own problems and which steadily undercut democracy in their systems. What we see in the world today is the tyranny of the weak and incapable who blame all their problems on the advanced system in place in the United States.

The United Nations, instead of being a concert of free nations, has become the prime vehicle for anti-Americanism and through its agencies gives aid and comfort to the terrorists who want to destroy the United States. Mary Robinson of Ireland, who served as the UN human rights chief, is typical of the UN bureaucrats who are hostile to the United States as it combats terrorism. She angrily criticized the United States for not giving prisoner of war status to Taliban and al Qaeda members held at Guantanamo Bay and also condemned the U.S. government's detention of other terrorist suspects and the projected use of military tribunals, though those have been used for generations.

It has to be recognized that many European governments are not only controlled by historically anti-American socialists but feel pressure from the large Muslim populations that they have allowed into their midst and which constitute a kind of fifth column. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, while upholding solidarity with the United States on the Iraq threat, has had to reckon with the alliance of old-line Marxist elements in his own party with the new forces of militant Islam. Thus in late September 2002 thousands of anti-American demonstrators filled the streets of London. Reuters reported on September 29th "the hard left Communist Refoundation Party organized the event." The key elements in the demonstrations, according to Reuters, was the Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain. The wire service estimated that there are 2.5 million Muslims in Britain, with more illegals arriving every day. News photos showed a mass of Arab faces.

The problem of hostility from Muslims around the world will be with us for decades, if not longer. The conflict between us and them is a true clash of civilizations. Actually, it is not a new conflict. The Western world has had to deal with it since Islam burst forth as an explosive force in the seventh century. In short order, it destroyed much of the Byzantine world, the world of Eastern Christianity. Muslim forces almost conquered Central and Western Europe, holding on in the Balkans until the First World War. Despite this age-old threat and current terrorism, not all Muslim countries represent a threat to the United States or are consumed with the anger of those at the forefront of militant action. On the other hand, some so-called moderate Muslim countries may take a turn for the worse. James Hackett, the military expert, wrote in The Washington Times July 23rd, that

. . . after 23 years and some $50 billion in aid . . . Egypt remains an enigma. . . . The country is a hotbed of fanatics who want to overthrow the government and create an Iranian style theocracy.

No amount of cash, sweet reason or skilled diplomacy will enable the United States to eradicate this kind of anti-American fanaticism. We need to be reminded of the saying that no good deed goes unpunished. That is the situation we are facing in this hostile world environment. The hatred boiling up in the Third World and elsewhere isn't the byproduct of any wrongful deed on the part of the United States.

The most disturbing and inexcusable aspect of this situation is that the irrational anti-American hatred of the Third World has been picked up and embraced by political, intellectual and cultural elites in the United States and other Western countries who should know better and who are beneficiaries of the strengths of American life and Western traditions.

The Third World chorus of angry voices employs the theme that American culture is a threat to other cultural traditions. But, as a writer in The Wall Street Journal has said, this theme is out of date. The culture of Madison, Hamilton, Longfellow, Mark Twain and Ronald Reagan has all but vanished under the current blanket of multiculturalism. In schools and universities and the media, the common theme, the mantra, is diversity. Students learn about other cultures before they learn their own heritage and culture, if they ever truly learn what is their own by birthright. They are told that all cultures are equal, only ours is somewhat less than equal. Nelson Mandela is given a higher ranking than Teddy Roosevelt or Robert E. Lee. Only the radicals in American history, the apostles of civil disobedience, get a ranking with such latter-day liberal saints as Mandela.

John Leo, a columnist for Newsweek and many newspapers, addressed this subject after 9/11. He wrote that moral relativism

. . . is at the heart of the multicultural philosophy that has dominated our schools for a generation. Multiculturalism goes way beyond tolerance and appreciation of other cultures and nations. It teaches that all cultures and cultural expressions are equally valid. This sweeps away moral standards. Every culture (except America, of course) is correct by its own standards and unjudgeable by others.

This philosophy or mindset inhibits American society from fighting against real civilizational enemies and, most specifically, combating terrorism. As an example of this is "a disgraceful statement on the terrorist attacks" put out by the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church which stated that

The affluence of nations such as our own stands in stark contrast to other parts of the world wracked by crushing poverty. . . .

Mr. Leo added that this statement was meant to evoke September 11 in a spirit of moral equivalence. "In plain English," he said, "the bishops seem to think that Americans are in no position to complain about the Manhattan massacre." The ideologically driven bishops are hostile to the United States. They are willing to overlook an appalling act of evil. The people killed in the trade towers had nothing to do with poverty in the Third World. In any case, the suicide bombers in the aircraft came, with two exceptions, from Saudi Arabia, one of the richest countries in the world.

As Mr. Leo explained, this is an example of a kind of irrationalism that could be a major problem in the long haul as the U.S. government defends America's freedom and national security. Other examples of this irrationality and hate America and blame America rhetoric abound, especially at universities.

Another example that has come to my attention is an article by Ebrahim Moosa, associate research professor of religion at Duke University. Writing in The Chronicle at Duke September 11, 2002, he referred to "an atmosphere of blinding patriotism" and spoke of "the crimes of the U.S. government." He then asserted that the real victims (of 9/11) are "those unaccounted innocents who lost their lives in the villages and cities of Afghanistan in retaliatory attacks. . . . " To make clear his hostility, he added "the developed nations of Europe and America are partners in guilt in subverting the aspirations of millions in the developing world."

In varying degree, this was the prevailing attitude expressed in public comments from members of the Duke community. At Duke, the mantra is diversity. But in the run up to congressional debate of the war powers resolution, it was absolutely clear that there isn't any intellectual diversity at Duke. The faculty members who expressed themselves were monolithic in their liberal-left statements. Prior to congressional debate on the war powers resolution, the faculty comments evidenced tremendous opposition to the President's determination to deal decisively with the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Typical was a comment by Prof. Edward Tiryakian, a sociologist, who urged "a vigil for peace to countermand the bellicosity of a national administration," meaning the Bush administration. He said the United States was on a "warpath," but had nothing to say about the murderous Iraqi regime. So it went at other major universities such as Harvard where numerous faculty members responded to the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction by demanding that Harvard divest itself of any investments it has in Israel.

In the world of academia dominated by liberal-leftists the United States is never right, always deserving of criticism.

This outlook characterized a forum of Duke University law professors on September 11, 2002. Typical of the comments were remarks delivered by Scot Silliman, director of the Duke Center for Law, Ethics and National Security. He strongly criticized the U.S. policy of holding Taliban fighters at the Guantanamo Naval Base, attacking plans to consider prosecuting them before military tribunals. He asked:

Why are we building and enlarging the facilities at Guantanamo Bay which is in Cuban sovereign territory?

That's a claim that no one but Fidel Castro and other Cuban Communist officials have made. So much for the Duke Center's commitment to America's national security.

Obviously, as we proceed with the war on terrorism, operating in an increasingly hostile world, we need to rid ourselves of this kind of thinking. We also need to get rid of the multi-cultural establishment and reaffirm and reinforce our security interests and our traditional national culture and outlook. The task ahead is as much cultural as political. The appeasers and apologists for the Saddams of the world, who are bent on harming us, represent a political and strategic challenge. While responding to this challenge through diplomatic, economic and military means, we also have a compelling need to eliminate the culture of grievance which both threatens our national unity and causes us to regard as valid many of the denunciations that originate in the Third World or anti-American circles in Europe and Canada.

The task ahead for the United States in the 21st century is as great as has ever faced the country since the War of Independence. It will test the resolve of the American people as fully as the Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War. Our nation's history indicates that our people are up to the struggle ahead. But Americans need to understand that the struggle will be different and that our enemies abroad and our hostile elements within are resourceful and motivated by hatred of our way of life and traditions. Preserving our liberties and ensuring our security will not be easy in a hostile environment.