A reader writes:
From the Quote For The Day:
There was a time, seventy, eighty, a hundred years ago, that we Americans sat here in the western hemisphere, and puzzled over why British imperialists went to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. We viewed that sort of imperial adventurism with disdain. But, it’s really become part of what we do.
I think Andrew Bacevich is off base when he includes Afghanistan in that statement.
We went to Afghanistan with a very specific mission, to find the nest of a terrorist group that attacked our country so successfully that it left a stain on our calendar. It’s a shame that some of the people who were moved to join the military after 9/11 found themselves fighting Iraqis in Tikrit rather than al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But going after al Qaeda in the aftermath of 9/11 was both a psychological balm to the country and a real tactical response to eliminate a serious threat that we had previously underestimated. We were making up for lost time, and trying to exact revenge on behalf of 3000 lost souls. It’s a shame the mess in Iraq is commingled in the story at all.
Reacting to the same quote, another reader adds:
This definition of American exceptionalism is poorly crafted and the supposition that we are in Iraq and Afghanistan for the same reasons as the British in 19th cen is absurd. Even if you accept as Niall Ferguson asserts that we have now what amounts to a de facto empire, the causes for our intervention were based in assessments of threats posed by these countries post 9/11 not on territorial acquisition,wealth and power . I understand that some cynics insist that oil was the real reason for Iraq but they never answer the charge that if that were true why then did we feel the need to go to war instead of simply entering into contracts like everyone else was doing? Of course oil is vital but there were other ways of getting it short of a war.
Also, was the first gulf war an imperialist act? Somalia? Perhaps Panama fits the definition…of course each of these had other stated causes- the stopping of aggression, a man-made famine and the overturning of a democratic election respectively. While Somalia morphed overtime into something else, I cannot see how it could ever be construed as an imperial action designed to in effect colonize Somalia so as to further enhance the lives of American consumers. None of these with the exception of the Gulf War had anything to do with American creature comforts or cheap goods and to define GW1 that way is a bit absurd- the world not just America needs that region to be stable and having a Sadam invading his neighbors was deemed by GB1 to be unacceptable. All of these decisions can be second guessed and disagreed with but they do not support his case of British style imperialism. His complaint about Americans wanting their cheap goods applies to our relationship with China and the idea of free trade and globalization but that really has nothing to do with imperialism as conventionally understood or, as far as I can see, with notions concerning American exceptionalism.
The Dish 