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A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 12, 2001
C.G. Estabrook
Instead
of Terror
Alexander Cockburn
Wide World
of Torture
November 11, 2001
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
November 10, 2001
Grover Furr
Seeking an Opposition
to the Afghan War
Bruce
Kyle
Anatomy
of a Green Smear:
Backstabbing Nancy Oden
November 9, 2001
Karen Snell
Torture By
Proxy
John Troyer
A
New Kind of Activism
Tariq Ali
Q &
A About the War
Michael
Colby
Schoolgirl
Gets Booted
for Anti-war Views
November 8, 2001
Mokhiber/Weissman
The
Cipro Rip-Off
Mitchel Cohen
The Smear Campaign
Against Nancy Oden
Steve
Perry
American
Roulette
November 7, 2001
Bahour/Dahan
Placebo Peace
Plan
Tom Turnipseed
Bush
Gives Billions
to His Oil Buddies
Cockburn/St. Clair
Greens, Airports
and
National ID Cards
Dr. Susan
Block
Ayatollah
Asscroft
Brian J. Foley
Bombing Campaign
Not "Self-Defense" Under International Law
November 6, 2001
Mark Scaramella
Where's
That Red Cross Money Going
C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
Sheperd
Bliss
Scott
Nearing on War
Rep. Ron Paul
Underwriting
the Taliban
Tariq
Ali
The
General Who
Came to Dinner
Evan Ravitz
Stop the War
Through
Direct Democracy
Steve
Perry
Hunger
in Afghanistan
November 5, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
Living
in the Minefields
David Price
Terror
and Indigenous People
November 3, 2001
Declan McCullagh
Nancy Oden Interview
Daniel
Wolff
The
Memphis Blues Again
Mark Weisbrot
War on Civilians
Dave Marsh
How
the RIAA (and the FBI) Cheat Musicians
Robert Jensen
Speaking
Out Against
War on Campus
November 2, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Green
Party Leader Detained at Maine Airport; Prevented from Boarding
Any Plane
Alexander Cockburn
FBI Eyes
Torture
November 1, 2001
Dean Baker
Dying
for Patents
Sami Amarah
US Attempts
to Recruit
Russian Vets of Afghan War
Molly Secours
Where
Are the Voices of Reason? Let the Women
Be Heard
William Blum
Unleashing the
CIA
October 31, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
Terrorize
the Poor,
Subsidize the Rich
Chris Clarke
Thank God
for Berkeley
Steve
Perry
The
Silent Genocide
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November
12, 2001
Saying Goodbye to Patriotism
By Robert Jensen
This summer I wrote a book review for an academic
journal -- one of those terribly important pieces of writing
that will be read by tens and tens of people, some of them actually
people outside my own family. The book is about the history
of governmental restrictions on U.S. news media during war,
and it's a good book in many ways. But I faulted the author for
accepting the American mythology about the nobility of our wars
and their motivations. I challenged his uncritical use of the
term patriotism, which I called "perhaps the single most
morally and intellectually bankrupt concept in human history."
By coincidence, the galley proofs for
the piece came back to me for review a few days after September
11. I paused as I re-read my words, and I thought about the
reaction those words might spark, given the reflexive outpouring
of patriotism in the wake of the terrorist attacks. I thought
about the controversy that some of my writing had already sparked
on campus and, it turned out, beyond the campus. I thought about
how easy it would be to take out that sentence.
I thought about all that for some time
before deciding to let it stand. My reason was simple: I think
that statement was true on September 10, and if anything, I'm
more convinced it is true after September 11.
I also believe that nestled in the truth
of that assertion is a crucial question for the U.S.-based peace
movement, one that we cannot avoid after 9-11:
Are we truly internationalist? Can we
get beyond patriotism? Or, in the end, are we just Americans?
That is a way, I think, of asking whether
we are truly for peace and justice.
I realize that framing of the question
may seem harsh. It may rub the wrong way people who want to
hold onto a positive notion of patriotism.
I mean the statement to be harsh because
I believe the question is crucial. If in the end we are just
Americans, if we cannot move beyond patriotism, then we cannot
claim to be internationalists. And, if we are not truly internationalist
in our outlook -- all the way to the bone -- then I do not think
we truly call ourselves people committed to peace and justice.
Let me try to make the case for this
by starting with definitions.
My dictionary defines patriotism as "love
and loyal or zealous support of one's own country." We'll
come back to that, but let's also look beyond the dictionary
to how the word is being used at this moment in history, in this
country. I would suggest there are two different, and competing,
definitions of patriotism circulating these days.
Definition
#1: Patriotism as loyalty to the war effort.
It's easy to get a handle on this use
of the word. Just listen to the president of the United States
speak. Or watch the TV anchors. Or, as I have done, be a guest
on a lot of talk radio shows. This view of patriotism is pretty
simple: We were attacked. We must defend ourselves. The only
real way to defend ourselves is by military force. If you want
to be patriotic, you should -- you must -- support the war.
I have been told often that it is fine
for me to disagree with that policy, but now is not the time
to disagree publicly. A patriotic person, I am told, should
remain quiet and support the troops until the war is over, at
which point we can all have a discussion about the finer points
of policy. If I politely disagree with that, then the invective
flows: Commie, terrorist-lover, disloyal, unpatriotic. Love
it or leave it.
It is easy to take apart this kind of
patriotism. It is a patriotism that is incompatible with democracy
or basic human decency. To see just how intellectually and morally
bankrupt a notion it is, just ask this question: What would
we have said to Soviet citizens who might have made such an
argument about patriotic duty as the tanks rolled into Prague
in 1968? To draw that analogy is not to say the two cases are
exactly alike. Rather, it is to point out that a decision to
abandon our responsibility to evaluate government policy and
surrender our power to think critically is a profound failure,
intellectually and morally.
Definition
#2: Patriotism as critique of the war effort.
Many in the peace-and-justice movement,
myself included, have suggested that to be truly patriotic one
cannot simply accept policies because they are handed down by
leaders or endorsed by a majority of people, even if it is an
overwhelming majority. Being a citizen in a real democracy, we
have said over and over, means exercising our judgment, evaluating
policies, engaging in discussion, and organizing to try to help
see that the best policies are enacted. When the jingoists start
throwing around terms like "anti-American" and "traitor,"
we point out that true patriotism means staying true to the
core commitments of democracy and the obligations that democracy
puts on people. There is nothing un-American, we contend, about
arguing for peace.
That's all clear enough. As I have said,
I have used that line of argument many times. It is the best
way -- maybe the only way -- to respond in public at this moment
if one wants to be effective in building an antiwar movement.
We all remind ourselves, over and over, that we have to start
the discussion where people are, not where we wish people were.
If people feel "love and loyal or zealous support of one's
own country," then we have to be aware of that and respond
to it.
But increasingly, I feel uncomfortable
arguing for patriotism, even with this second definition. And
as I listen to friends and allies in the peace-and-justice movement,
I have started to wonder whether that claim to patriotism-as-critical-engagement
is indeed merely strategic. Or is it motivated by something
else? Are we looking for a way to hold onto patriotism because
we really believe in it?
I think it is valuable to ask the question:
Is there any way to define the term that doesn't carry with
it arrogant and self-indulgent assumptions? Is there any way
to salvage patriotism?
I want to argue that invoking patriotism
puts us on dangerous ground and that we must be careful about
our strategic use of it.
At its ugliest, patriotism means a ranking
of the value of the lives of people based on boundaries. To
quote Emma Goldman: "Patriotism assumes that our globe
is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron
gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular
spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent
than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore,
the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill,
and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others."
People have said this directly to me:
Yes, the lives of U.S. citizens are more important than the
lives of Afghan citizens. If innocent Afghans have to die, have
to starve -- even in large numbers -- so that we can achieve
our goals, well, that's the way it is, and that's the way it
should be. I assume no argument here is needed as to why this
type of patriotism is unacceptable. We may understand why people
feel it, but it is barbaric.
But what of the effort to hold onto a
kinder and gentler style of patriotism by distinguishing it
from this kind of crude nationalism? We must ask: What are the
unstated assumptions of this other kind of patriotism we have
been defending? If patriotism is about loyalty of some sort,
to what are we declaring our loyalty?
If we are pledging loyalty to a nation-state,
we have already touched on the obvious problems: What if that
nation-state pursues an immoral objective? Should we remain
loyal to it? The same question is obvious if our loyalty is
to a specific government or set of government officials. If
they pursue immoral objectives or pursue moral objectives in
an immoral fashion, what would it mean to be loyal to them?
Some suggest we should be loyal to the
ideals of America, a set of commitments and practices connected
with the concepts of freedom and democracy. That's all well
and good; freedom and democracy are good things, and I try to
not only endorse those values but live them. I assume everyone
in this room does as well.
But what makes those values uniquely
American? Is there something about the United States or the
people who live here that make us more committed to, or able
to act out, the ideals of freedom and democracy -- more so than,
say, Canadians or Indians or Brazilians? Are not people all
over the world -- including those who live in countries that
do not guarantee freedom to the degree the United States does
-- capable of understanding and acting on those ideals? Are
not different systems possible for making real those ideals
in a complex world?
If freedom and democracy are not unique
to us, then they are simply human ideals, endorsed to varying
degrees in different places and realized to different degrees
by different people acting in different places? If that's true,
then they are not distinctly American ideals. They were not invented
here, and we do not have a monopoly on them. So, if one is trying
to express a commitment to those ideals, why do it in the limiting
fashion of talking of patriotism?
Let me attempt an analogy to gender.
After 9-11, a number of commentators have argued that criticisms
of masculinity should be rethought. Yes, masculinity is often
connected to, and expressed through, competition, domination,
and violence, they said. But as male firefighters raced into
burning buildings and risked their lives to save others, cannot
we also see that masculinity encompasses a kind of strength
that is rooted in caring and sacrifice?
My response is, yes, of course men often
exhibit such strength. But do not women have the capacity for
that kind of strength rooted in caring and sacrifice? Do they
not exhibit such strength on a regular basis? Why of course
they do, most are quick to agree. Then the obvious question is,
what makes these distinctly masculine characteristics? Are they
not simply human characteristics?
We identify masculine tendencies toward
competition, domination, and violence because we see patterns
of different behavior; we see that men are more prone to such
behavior in our culture. We can go on to observe and analyze
the ways in which men are socialized to behave in those ways.
We do all that work, I would hope, to change those behaviors.
But that is a very different exercise
than saying that admirable human qualities present in both men
and women are somehow primarily the domain of one of those genders.
To assign them to a gender is misguided, and demeaning to the
gender that is then assumed not to possess them to the same
degree. Once you start saying "strength and courage are
masculine traits," it leads to the conclusion that woman
are not as strong or courageous. To say "strength and courage
are masculine traits," then, is to be sexist.
The same holds true for patriotism. If
we abandon the crude version of patriotism but try to hold onto
an allegedly more sophisticated version, we bump up against
this obvious question: Why are human characteristics being labeled
as American if there is nothing distinctly American about them?
If people want to argue that such terminology
is justified because those values are realized to their fullest
degree in the United States, then there's some explaining to
do. Some explaining to the people of Guatemala and Iran, Nicaragua
and South Vietnam, East Timor and Laos, Iraq and Panama. We
would have to explain to the victims of U.S. aggression -- direct
and indirect -- how it is that our political culture, the highest
expression of the ideals of freedom and democracy, has managed
routinely to go around the world overthrowing democratically
elected governments, supporting brutal dictators, funding and
training proxy terrorist armies, and unleashing brutal attacks
on civilians when we go to war. If we want to make the claim
that we are the fulfillment of history and the ultimate expression
of the principles of freedom and justice, our first stop might
be Hiroshima. We might want to explain that claim there.
If we are serious about peace and justice
in the world, we need to subject this notion of patriotism to
scrutiny. If we do that, I would suggest, it is clear that any
use of the concept of patriotism is bound to be chauvinistic
at some level. At its worst, patriotism can lead easily to support
for barbarism. At its best, it is self-indulgent and arrogant
in its assumptions about the uniqueness of U.S. culture.
None of what I have said should be taken
as a blanket denunciation of the United States, our political
institutions, or our culture. People often tell me, "You
start with the assumption that everything about the United States
is bad." Of course I do not assume that. That would be as
absurd a position as the assumption that everything about the
United States is good. I can't imagine any reasonable person
making either statement. That does raise the question, of course,
of who is a reasonable person. We might ask that question about,
for example, George Bush, the father. In 1988, after the U.S.
Navy warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian commercial airliner
in a commercial corridor, killing 290 civilians, Bush said,
"I will never apologize for the United States of America.
I don't care what the facts are."
I want to put forward the radical proposition
that we should care what the facts are. We should start with
the assumption that everything about the United States, like
everything about any country, needs to be examined and assessed.
That is what it means to be a moral person.
There is much about this country a citizen
can be proud of, and I am in fact proud of those things. The
personal freedoms guaranteed (to most people) in this culture,
for example, are quite amazing. As someone who regularly tries
to use those freedoms, I am as aware as anyone of how precious
they are.
There also is much to be appalled by.
The obscene gaps in wealth between rich and poor, for example,
are quite amazing as well, especially in a wealthy society that
claims to be committed to justice.
In that sense, we are like any other
grouping of people. That doesn't mean one can't analyze various
societies and judge some better than others by principles we
can articulate and defend -- so long as they are truly principles,
applied honestly and uniformly. But one should maintain a bit
of humility in the endeavor. Perhaps instead of saying "The
United States is the greatest nation on earth" -- a comment
common among politicians, pundits, and the public -- we would
be better off saying, "I live in the United States and
have deep emotional ties to the people, land, and ideals of
this place. Because of these feelings, I want to highlight the
positive while working to change what is wrong." That is
not moral relativism -- it is a call for all of us to articulate
and defend our positions.
We can make that statement without having
to argue that we are, in some essential way, better than everyone
else. We can make that statement without arrogantly suggesting
that other people are inherently less capable of articulating
or enacting high ideals. We can make that statement and be ready
and willing to engage in debate and discussion about the merits
of different values and systems.
We can make that statement, in other
words, and be true internationalists, people truly committed
to peace and justice. If one wants to call that statement an
expression of patriotism, I will not spend too much time arguing.
But I will ask: If we make a statement like that, why do we need
to call it an expression of patriotism? What can we learn by
asking ourselves: What makes us, even people in the peace-and-justice
community, want to hold onto the notion of patriotism with such
tenacity?
When I write or talk with the general
public and raise questions like these, people often respond,
"If you hate America so much, why don't you leave?"
But what is this America that I allegedly
hate? The land itself? The people who live here? The ideals
in the country's founding documents? I do not hate any of those
things.
When people say to me "love it or
leave it," what is the "it" to which they refer?
No one can ever quite answer that. Still,
I have an answer for them.
I will not leave "it" for a
simple reason: I have nowhere else to go. I was born here. I
was given enormous privileges here. My place in the world is
here, where I feel an obligation to use that privilege to be
part -- a very small part of, as we all are only a small part
-- of a struggle to make real a better world. Whatever small
part I can play in that struggle, whatever I can achieve, I
will have to achieve here, in the heart of the beast.
I love it, which is to say that I love
life -- I love the world in which I live and the people who
live in it with me. I will not leave that "it."
That "it" may not be specific
enough for some, but it's the best I can do. Maybe it will help
to answer in the negative, for I can say more clearly what the
"it" is not. I can describe more clearly what is the
America I do not love.
The America I love is not this administration,
or any other collections of politicians, or the corporations
they serve.
It is not the policies of this administration,
or any other collection of politicians, or the corporations
they serve.
The America I love is not wrapped up
in a mythology about "how good we are" that ignores
the brutal realities of our own history of conquest and barbarism.
Most of all, I want no part of the America
that arrogantly claims that the lives and hopes and dreams of
people who happen to live within the boundaries of the United
States have more value than those in other places. Nor will
I indulge America in the belief that our grief is different.
Since September 11, the United States has demanded that the
world take our grief more seriously. When some around the world
have not done so, we express our outrage.
But we should ask: What makes the grief
of a parent who lost a child in the World Trade Center any deeper
than the grief of a parent who lost a child in Baghdad when
U.S. warplanes rained death on the civilian areas of Iraq in
the Gulf War? Or the parents of a child in Nicaragua when the
U.S. terrorist proxy army ravaged that country? Soon after 9-11,
I heard a television reporter describe lower Manhattan as "Beirut
on the Hudson." We might ask, how did Beirut come to look
like Beirut, and what is our responsibility in that? And what
of the grief of those who saw their loved ones die during the
shelling of that city?
We should ask: Where was the empathy
of America for the grief of those people?
Certainly we grieve differently, more
intensely, when people close to us die. We don't feel the loss
of a family member the same way as a death of a casual friend.
We feel something different over the death of someone we knew
compared with the death of a stranger. But we must understand
that the grief we feel when our friends and neighbors became
victims of political violence is no different than what people
around the world feel. We must understand that each of those
lives lost abroad has exactly the same value as the life of
any one of our family, friends and neighbors.
September 11 was a dark day. I still
remember what it felt like to watch those towers come down,
the darkness that settled over me that day, the hopelessness,
how tangible death felt -- for me, not only the deaths of those
in the towers but also the deaths of those who would face the
bombs in the war that might follow, the war that did follow,
the war that goes on.
But humans are resilient; in the darkness
we tend to look for light, for a way out of the darkness.
I believe there is a light shining out
of September 11, out of all that darkness. It is a light that
I believe we Americans can follow to our own salvation. That
light is contained in a simple truth that is obvious, but which
Americans have never really taken to heart: We are part of the
world. We cannot any longer hide from that world. We cannot
allow our politicians, and generals, and corporate executives
to do their dirty business around the world while we hide from
the truths about just how dirty that business really is. We
can no longer hide from the coups they plan, the wars they start,
the sweatshops they run.
For me, all this means saying goodbye
to patriotism.
That is the paradox: September 11 has
sparked a wave of patriotism, a patriotism that has in many
cases been overtly hateful, racist and xenophobic. A patriotism
that can lead people to say, as one person wrote to me, "We
should bomb [Afghanistan] until there's no more earth to bomb."
But the real lesson of September 11,
which I believe we will eventually learn, is that if we are
to survive as a free people, as decent people who want honestly
to claim the ideals we say we live by, we must say goodbye to
patriotism. That patriotism will not relieve our grief, but
only deepen it. It will not solve our problems but only extend
them. I believe there is no hope for ourselves or for the world
if we continue to embrace patriotism, no matter what the definition.
We must give up our "love and loyal
or zealous support of one's own country" and transfer that
love, loyalty and zealousness to the world, and especially the
people of the world who have suffered most so that we Americans
can live in affluence.
We must be able to say, as the great
labor leader of the early 20th century Eugene Debs said, "I
have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I
am a citizen of the world."
I am with Debs. I believe it is time
to declare: I am not patriotic. I am through with trying to
redefine the term patriotic to make sense. There is no sense
to it.
That kind of statement will anger many,
but at some point we must begin to take that risk, for this
is not merely an academic argument over semantics.
This is both a struggle to save ourselves
and a struggle to save the lives of vulnerable people around
the world.
We must say goodbye to patriotism because
the kind of America the peace-and-justice movement wants to
build cannot be built on, or through, the patriotism of Americans.
We must say goodbye to patriotism because
the world cannot survive indefinitely the patriotism of Americans.
CP
Robert Jensen
is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin,
a member of the Nowar
Collective, and author of the book Writing
Dissent:Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream
. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
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