The knight's not right

By Deauwand Myers

Neo-liberals and neo-conservatives haven't learned this simple lesson: imperialism is a gateway sin, as it requires so many other sins to successfully execute it.

The world has always been on fire. The human heart knows no end to violence, cruelty and malice. However, according to some pundits, the world's a mess, and it's President Obama's fault. Obama isn't nearly as comfortable with deploying American military power as his predecessor, George W. Bush. Yet, he finds himself being dragged back into Iraq.

In Jesse Washington's recent AP article, "As bombs fall over Iraq, old emotions rise in US," a retired American firefighter expressed this very idea, crystallizing what too many Americans believe to be true: "We need to go over there [Iraq] and establish peace again, or at least try to…the U.S. needs to play mother over everybody else to lead them and guide them and take care of them," he added. Breathtaking.

This notion of America as big daddy/momma is dangerous and delusional; a classic example of paternalism and Western imperialism run amuck. I understand the flawed reasoning:

After all, the United States, with weakened European allies, fought back the Axis powers, defeated fascist, Nazi Germany and a militant Japan, and then rebuilt war-ravaged Europe.

America's foreign policy, like its European counterparts, has been morally relativistic for generations. In part, it asserts, "Do as I say, not as I do. Evil is what we Americans say it is, and that can change at any time." America can be friends with dictators and theocracies, so long as they are friends with us.

American interventionists are very concerned with the human, socioeconomic and socio-political rights of foreign nations, but don't share this same concern for their own suffering citizens.

Native Americans, victims of centuries of land theft, broken treaties and genocide, still haven't had proper compensation for the myriad of injustices done to them by the American government.

JFK, like Reagan, was (rightfully) very concerned about the spread of communism, yet Kennedy presided over a particularly violent time in American history, and his assassination presaged a decade of turbulence, death and massive social upheaval. At least he recognized how hypocritical and hollow America's clarion calls for freedom abroad sounded to a global audience, while racial minorities lived as second-class citizens in America. President Reagan shared no such affliction ― more on him later.

Even former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a Republican, described American foreign policy "schizophrenic."

America created dictators and terrorists to later depose them: Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. America assassinated (or conspired to do so) democratically elected heads of state, like the Congo's President Lumumba, and created "banana republics" in Central America, or helped fashion the slave-like agricultural labor in South America, for coffee and yes, bananas.

The political and socioeconomic misery from actions like these have led to nearly failed states and/or hyper-leftist regimes in Latin America and an uptick in illegal immigration thereof, and an increasingly destabilized Middle East. It's also created lots of enmity channeled by dastardly, clever men leading Islamists so extreme that their brand of religious/socio-political doctrine is mostly a death cult (ISIS), even shunned by al-Qaida.

America isn't the only culprit. The end of World War I led to new countries being formed in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, without regards to centuries-old conflicts. In Europe: Yugoslavia, Poland and Greece, among others; in the Middle East, via the secret Sykes-Picot agreement: Iraq, Transjordan and Palestine are examples. (Almost all of Africa's countries were under European colonial rule for generations until after World War II).

Imperialists Sykes and Picot were very invested in Anglo-American and Anglo-European empires, modernized for the 20th century. Vulgarly, they believed, as generations did before them: We must civilize the colored heathens. The fruit of their racist, ethnocentric hubris is self-evident, bitter and quite bloody.

If America is truly "pro-freedom," any regime that's anti-democratic is not one we should support. Yet, President Reagan infamously rebuffed calls to sanction the apartheid regime of South Africa. He and many in the Republican party did so under the canard of resisting communism, since Nelson Mandela and other activists fighting against the brutal, hyper-racist South African government communicated with socialist organizations.

Now, Mandela is a saint, and like Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr., readily touted and embraced by those same conservatives and Republicans who called them and the women and men who fought alongside them, dangerous, commie terrorists.

In the end, all this god-like manipulation of entire countries, all this bloodshed and wars of choice (e.g. Vietnam and Iraq) have brought us what, exactly? A prosperous Western Europe after WWII, and a thriving, democratic Korea were positive outcomes, but they do not represent a divine mandate for American intervention in every conflict in the world.

White knights can make for good archetypes in literary fiction, not geopolitics.

Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory and is currently an English professor outside of Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.

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