REALITY REALLY BITES
Although we Americans tend to be a happy-go-lucky optimistic lot, we’ve developed something of a myopic and jaded view of the rest of the world and how our supposed betters look upon us as either blithering, idiotic, tobacco chewing, red-necked crackers from Jesusland or evil, manipulative, militaristic xenophobes working clandestinely to make the world safe for Haliburton and Mickey Mouse.
The spectacular and heroic efforts of our military in aiding the hundreds of thousands of tsunami victims in SE Asia is a prime example of how Americans are being marginalized by the world press and how the United Nations is proving itself to be for anyone with the guts to see, a hollow shell, or worse, a shameless self-promoting cadre of self-important, self-aggrandizing, self-centered, do-nothing lickspittles.
Victor Davis Hanson speculates as to what the world would have been like the last 15 years or so without the United States:
Imagine a world in which there was no United States during the last 15 years. Iraq, Iran, and Libya would now have nukes. Afghanistan would remain a seventh-century Islamic terrorist haven sending out the minions of Zarqawi and Bin Laden worldwide. The lieutenants of Noriega, Milosevic, Mullah Omar, Saddam, and Moammar Khaddafi would no doubt be adjudicating human rights at the United Nations. The Ortega Brothers and Fidel Castro, not democracy, would be the exemplars of Latin America. Bosnia and Kosovo would be national graveyards like Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Add in Kurdistan as well — the periodic laboratory for Saddam’s latest varieties of gas.
Then why the resentment overseas? Hanson compares Americas detractors with the frightened townfolks in classic American westerns:
After all, the holed-up ‘good’ citizens were always angry that the lawman had shamed them, worried that he might make dangerous demands on their insular lives, confused about whether they would have to accommodate themselves either to savagery or civilization in their town’s future, and, above all, assured that they could libel and slur the tin star in a way that would earn a bullet from the lawbreaker. It was precisely that paradox between impotent high-sounding rhetoric and blunt-speaking, roughshod courage that lay at the heart of the classic Western from Shane and High Noon to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Magnificent Seven.
This doesn’t explain the attitude of the world press and their studious, almost ludicrous avoidance of any mention of the US Navy (don’t forget those magnificent Aussies too) in tsunami relief efforts. This from Powerline quoting from a Daily Telegraph story:
Last week we were subjected to one of the most extraordinary examples of one-sided news management of modern times, as most of our media, led by the BBC, studiously ignored what was by far the most effective and dramatic response to Asia’s tsunami disaster. A mighty task force of more than 20 US Navy ships, led by a vast nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, and equipped with nearly 90 helicopters, landing craft and hovercraft, were carrying out a round-the-clock relief operation, providing food, water and medical supplies to hundreds of thousands of survivors.
The BBC went out of its way not to report this. Only when one BBC reporter, Ben Brown, hitched a lift from one of the Abraham Lincoln’s Sea Hawk helicopters to report from the Sumatran coast was there the faintest hint of the part that the Americans, aided by the Australian navy, were playing.
What then is the real story here?
The real story of the week should thus have been the startling contrast between the impotence of the international organizations, the UN and the EU, and the remarkable efficiency of the US and Australian military on the ground. Here and there, news organizations have tried to report this, such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine in Germany, and even the China News Agency, not to mention various weblogs, such as the wonderfully outspoken Diplomad, run undercover by members of the US State Department, and our own www.eureferendum.blogspot.com. But when even Communist China’s news agency tells us more about what is really going on than the BBC, we see just how strange the world has become.
Could this slanted, biased coverage explain this maddening remark by a Euroweenie reported by Varifrank?
Today, during an afternoon conference that wrapped up my project of the last 18 months, one of my Euro collegues tossed this little turd out to no one in particular:
” See, this is why George Bush is so dumb, theres a disaster in the world and he sends an Aircraft Carrier…”
After which he and many of my Euro colleagues laughed out loud.
and then they looked at me. I wasn’t laughing, and neither was my Hindi friend sitting next to me, who has lost family in the disaster.
Okay…you’re an American sitting with a bunch of ignorant Eurofrauds who’ve just made a remark so stupid, so insensitive that, in my case, would have set loose a string of profanity laced invectives so purple, it would’ve put the Giant People Eater to shame. Varifrank, thankfully, takes a calmer approach…and even more devastating:
“Hmmm, let’s see, what would be the ideal ship to send to a disaster, now what kind of ship would we want?
Something with its own inexhuastible power supply?
Something that can produce 900,000 gallons of fresh water a day from sea water?
Something with its own airfield? So that after producing the fresh water, it could help distribute it?
Something with 4 hospitals and lots of open space for emergency supplies?
Something with a global communications facility to make the coordination of disaster relief in the region easier?
Well “Franz”, us peasants in America call that kind of ship an “Aircraft Carrier”. We have 12 of them. How many do you have? Oh that’s right, NONE. Lucky for you and the rest of the world, we are the kind of people who share. Even with people we dont like. In fact, if memory serves,once upon a time we peasants spent a ton of money and lives rescuing people who we had once tried to kill and who tried to kill us…”
So where is the UN? What are they doing? Hugh Hewitt, in his inimitable way, puts the issue succinctly:
With the oil-for-food-for-dictators scandals pushed temporarily into the background, it is easy to forget the absurdity of arguments in favor of a “lead role” for the United Nations. Why were there no calls for former Enron execs to take the lead role in the rebuilding of the Iraqi oil and gas industry? Why does the American press and the American left disconnect the Kofiklatch from the siphoned-off billions still being used to attack Americans and Iraqis from the meeting planners gathering at various relief conferences around the world.
Corrupt, venal, and apparently taking credit for running the relief effort even though they complain that US and Aussie helicopters aren’t throwing supplies for the victims overboard to ferry hundreds of UN employees who are acting as “assessment teams” into the disaster area, the United Nations is not only proving its impotence, it’s proving that it’s incapable of fulfilling one of its primary mandates; humanitarian relief on a global scale.
I suppose in the years ahead, Americans are going to have to get used to the idea that no matter what good we do in the world (Afghanistan, Iraq, the Sudan, or SE Asia) we’ll be reviled, despised, feared, and belittled. Is this the price we pay for being a hyperpower in a uni-polar world? Or is it a harbinger of an even more destructive anti-Americanism that, when the next terrorist attack hits our shores, the entire planet will be dancing in the streets in joy, not just the islamofacist thugs who celebrated on 9/11?
Man…reality really bites.