War against terrorism or expansion of the American Empire?

And that's what I try to make people understand about US foreign policy. Goodness has nothing to do with it. It's the greatest myth concerning that policy, the myth that most often makes it very difficult for people like myself to get others to accept the ideas that we put forth. This myth is the deeply-held belief that no matter what the US does abroad, no matter how bad it may look, no matter what horror may result, the United States means well. American leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may lie, they may even on the odd occasion cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions are always noble. Of that Americans are certain. Even many people in the anti-war movement have a hard time shaking off this belief. If I were to write a book called The American Empire for Dummies, page one would say: Don't ever look for the moral factor. US foreign policy has no moral factor built into its DNA. Clear your mind of that baggage which only gets in the way of seeing beyond the clichés and the platitudes they feed us, your government and mine. It's not easy for most Americans to take what I say at face value. It's not easy for them to swallow my message. They see their leaders on TV and their photos in the press, they see them smiling or laughing, telling jokes; see them with their families, hear them speak of God and love, of peace and law, of democracy and freedom, of human rights and justice and even baseball ... How can such people be moral monsters? They have names like George and Dick and Donald, not a single Mohammed or Abdullah in the bunch. And they all speak English. Well, George almost does. People named Mohammed or Abdullah sometimes cut off an arm or a leg as punishment for theft. We know that that's horrible. Americans are too civilized for that. But people named George and Dick and Donald go around the world dropping cluster bombs on cities and villages, and the many unexploded ones become land mines, and before very long a child comes by, picks one up or steps on one of them, and loses an arm or a leg, or both arms or both legs, and sometimes their eyesight. And the cluster bombs which actually explode do their own kind of bloody horror. And the noble American leaders use another weapon even worse -- depleted uranium, one of the most despicable weapons ever designed by a mad scientist, which poisons the air, the soil, the blood, and the genes, and produces grossly deformed babies amongst its many endearing qualities, and which, in a civilized world not intimidated by the United States, would be categorically banned. http://members.aol.com/bblum6/speech.htm [Proofreader’s note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on November 7, 2007]

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War Against Terrorism Or Expansion Of The American Empire?

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