8 ms·

On Moral Superiority

44 points by loxs 16y ago

locopati 16y ago
America's supposed moral superiority depended quite a bit on believing the rhetoric and ignoring both our foreign policy (support for anti-democratic forces in Iran, Iraq, Central & South America, Africa) and our internal problems (civil rights, income inequality).
- rdtsc 16y ago
  > America's supposed moral superiority depended quite a bit on believing the rhetoric... That is one thing that America excels at -- propaganda. Along with some other so called "democracies", it can at the same time install brutal regimes, kill and start wars all over the world _and_ somehow mentain its relatively stable propaganda image as a "peacemaker", "example of democracy", "human rights advocate" and so on. Anyone who studies history or is seriously interested in the current world affairs will recognize the propaganda for what it is. But interestingly enough, very few Americans do. A lot of them have a very skewed image about their own country, they believe in "moral supperiority" that US has over any other country in the world. The level of self-censorship and delusion even among "educated" intellectuals, the media, the majority of the population is astounding. In the ex-Soviet Union, we knew propaganda was propaganda. Except for some really crazy people, nobody believed in the system. Even those at the top. For example, it was interesting to observe how ex KGB agents, supposedly the ones most devoted to the communist cause, became uber-capatillists practically overnight in the quick grab of power and resources after the collapse.
  - locopati 16y ago
    I suspect some of the political upheaval in America is growing from the disjunction between American ideals with American reality (taking many forms of expression - Tea Party, nativism, corporatism, escapism, back-to-the-land movements, localism).
    - bpyne 16y ago
      What are the back-to-the-land and localism movements?
      - borism 16y ago
        back-to-the-land is probably what it says - "back-to-the-land" localism is probably communitarianism
      - locopati 16y ago
        I see young people buying farms as a form of back-to-the-land. Localism seems to capture eating locally grown foods & buying locally made goods. Not saying these are real movements with web sites and books about them, just words to capture trends.
        sophacles 16y ago
        They are real movements with websites and books about them. "buy local", "food not lawns", "locavore" are sample phrases to google for.
        bpyne 16y ago
        I was pretty sure that's what you meant by "localism" but didn't realize this purchasing tendency had been raised to the level of an "ism". My family and I started going in this direction around 10 years ago. To be clear, we prefer locally grown and made goods, but we like variety in our diet, so we happily purchase food that is out of season locally. Back-to-the-land is a new one for me. I didn't realize young people were eschewing modern office life for farming. It's a very respectable choice.
  - patrickk 16y ago
    A video about the CIA's covert wars in the 3rd world (six million dead): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R8gKQGmoao http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R8gKQGmoao
    - rdtsc 16y ago
      Thank you
jessriedel 16y ago
Is this worth reading? I stopped after the ridiculous claim that "If you can pay peanuts, you can produce tanks and ICBMs that cost peanuts." I mean, if a small band of hunter-gatherers is led by a single tribal leader with complete power, he can pay them nothing. But that doesn't mean he can make ICBMs for peanuts. Likewise, the US had objectively more economic power than the USSR, and, assuming that the USSR had to maintain military parity with the US to remain stable, it would be quite possible for the US to beat the USSR by out-producing it. (I'm not enough of a student of history to know if this is actually what happened.) Yes, things can be misleading if you use straight exchange rates, but that doesn't mean it was logically impossible for the US to out-spend an authoritarian government.
- xutopia 16y ago
  I thought it was worth reading. Obviously his expressions and grammar mistakes show English is not his first language but the point he makes is worth spending the time.
- rdtsc 16y ago
  > I mean, if a small band of hunter-gatherers is led by a single tribal leader with complete power, he can pay them nothing. But that doesn't mean he can make ICBMs for peanuts. Why not? He captures or pays off someone from US who has the know-how, and if he has an industrial base, natural resources they sure can do it. That is what the soviets did. A lot of their technology was pirated from the West. The atomic bomb, or most of the computer chips and operating systems (by the late 70s).
- bad_user 16y ago
  If those hunter-gatherers are amongst the world's top scientists, then of course you can produce tanks and ICBMs for peanuts. And USSR had plenty of scientists and natural resources ;)
  - jerf 16y ago
    Wealth and money aren't the same. They're related, but they don't freely interconvert, and are generally people overestimate the degree to which they are related. Building ICBMs requires not just money, but wealth. Infrastructure, the ability to divert your smartest people to building ICBMs because they aren't needed to solve "the food problem", ability to create a system where smart people can become educated, etc. Communism is a system in which the government basically has all the money, but it isn't very good at producing wealth. Wealth is produced by the aggregation of countless little local decisions and communism is absolutely terrible at making those local decisions. So even though the government basically has all the money, it was in a system that didn't have a lot of wealth. The USSR had plenty of scientists and natural resources, but they were embedded in a system that couldn't produce enough wealth to compete. The US ultimately, for all the sound and fury surrounding the military expenditures of the 1980s, was building its military out of the leftovers of its budget. A much less wealthy system couldn't even keep up with a fraction of the wealth the US had, regardless of how much money it may have controlled.
kiba 16y ago
The whole idea that the USSR central planning policy result in economic decline is bunk? I am suddenly reminded of Paul Samuelson and his economic textbook touting the idea that the Soviet economy will surpass the USA's economy. Of course, it never came true.
- protomyth 16y ago
  For a really simple way to illustrate how bad the USSR central planning was, look no further than some big companies IT shops. Managers not trained in the specific area and very mistrustful / contemptuous of the actual workers giving orders; defining process and schedule; and telling the workers what "best practices" is. Now, imagine this crud applied to farms and factories.
forinti 16y ago
As a Latin-American, I laugh at the notion that the US have any sort of moral authority. In fact, many communist movements in LA actually came to be in response to oppression administered from Washington; if you had a nasty dictator propped up by the US and the only people who would help were in Moscow, then your best bet would be to become a communist, just as the Croats cozied up to the Nazis in order to get rid of the Serbs.
- loxs 16y ago
  Of course, this might be the case with Latin America, I have no knowledge of the situation down there. But for us, Easter-Europeans, USA was really the better alternative to USSR
  - forinti 16y ago
    You don't always have the best alternatives available to you, even if you were clairvoyant enough to distinguish them. Would you say the russians were fools to embrace communism when they lived in a feudal system? The communist resistance in Europe started even before the US entered the war. Maybe if the US hadn't taken so long, things might have turned out different for the eastern bloc. Then again they might have taken a bashing for not being prepared and you would be under nazi rule still today.
- jargon 16y ago
  I was reading a book about Roads that talks about roads from brazil to the pacific. The author mentions a story about seeing a teen in South America, Venezuela iirc, wearing a t-shirt with bin laden's picture on it and the author asked the kid why he is wearing the shirt. The teen says, "Because he is a defender of the world's poor." Is this how people in South America see the war? Rich people killing poor people? Is Bin Laden really revered down there like this? I'm not trying to take sides, just curious about it because I can't even imagine someone wearing a bin laden t-shirt here. Is bin Laden the new Che in South America?
  - forinti 16y ago
xutopia 16y ago
That was one heck of a good read. I wished more blogs had this kind of content. I'm saddened that a lot of people will not read it because it is so long though.
itistoday 16y ago
Excellent read! My favorite paragraph: The people from Western Europe would not go on a jihad. However, during the last decade their opinion on the USA plummeted, too. Twenty years ago, if you were an American in Berlin, you would be revered, and more honored than the Berliners around… Not anymore. Now, you can often hear: “The country that lied to the entire world about the Iraqi WMD? That created and still maintains the Guantanamo gulag? That ran Abu Graib? That bombed to destruction the civilians in Faluja? That shot the Italian hostage resque mission? That killed the BBC journalists in Baghdad? That photographs, fingerprints and tracks every visitor like a criminal? That created the ECHELON system? That is killing in Afghanistan maybe more civilians than terrorists?… If it is decent, then Stalin is, too. This country is a blemish to the humankind." Although it's really hard to pick, you should just read the entire thing. If you still prefer the reader's digest: … Remember the great support Obama had among the ordinary people abroad before the president elections? Especially in Europe? There is a reason for this support. The ordinary people hoped that he will restore the US moral superiority, by bringing moral to the US politics… He failed to do it. The Guantanamo gulag stays. Some measures are taken to prevent the worst things the US Army does abroad – however, the “culture of concealment” is stronger than ever. Slowly, but surely one trend emerges and grows in the thinking of the people outside US. Namely, that this state has gone too far on the Evil Empire road. That it cannot be stopped anymore, even by a good-intended President. And that it is better late than never to say openly: “Things changed. This is not anymore the moral leader of the world – this is just another evil empire. One that the decent people must hate, loathe and oppose to.” What will happen if this trend of thinking prevails? Easy guess. Al-Qaeda will grow and attract more and more people, and will probably obstruct more of the US activity abroad. In fact, it may gain enough support to carry its fight on American soil. The support for US in Europe and the rest of the world will gradually diminish, to the extent that even the pro-US politicians will have to become blind and deaf to the USA needs. And very surely there will be new “cold wars” – economic, cultural etc. – between USA and some other countries, but it will not be possible anymore to win them through moral superiority. [.. snip ..] To preserve moral superiority, the US must first learn what is the correct move in situations like the current one. Whether Wikileaks is its enemy, or the best friend they can find – one that is brave enough to tell you you have a nasty problem, and to press on you to solve it on time. And whether people like Mike Mullen are its best servants, or its best enemies – the ones that tell you “There is no problem, continue this way, people will never learn of the crimes, truth never comes out”. If you are still not sure which is the correct position, ask one truly outstanding soldier – Gen. David Petraeus. He will surely be able to tell you the truth… Actually, you can tell it yourself, by using his simple principle – which action decreases the number of your enemies, and increases the number of your friends.
te_platt 16y ago
So the Soviets under Stalin murdered 10's of millions before 1950 but maintained moral equivalence with the United States until JFK was elected? I guess I have a different sense of morality.
- loxs 16y ago
  You know, things like nuking whole cities do count when measuring moral. Not that USSR was highly moral, just the opposite. USA was not too moral that days.
  - protomyth 16y ago
    As opposed to fire bombing a whole country or doing death marches?
    - loxs 16y ago
      I am not trying to measure who is (was) worse. The thing is that the USSR had their arguments to carry their propaganda on for several decades. And their people believed them more or less.
  - te_platt 16y ago
    You know, things like making a decision between ending a hellish war by killing millions or by killing hundreds of thousands (was there another option?) is terrible thing to have to do. Making a calculated political decision to murder millions just isn't in the same category. I don't want to justify any of the wrongdoings of anyone based on "the other guy is worse". I also don't accept that the United States was morally equivalent to the Soviet Union until JFK was elected.
    - loxs 16y ago
      As I said (in the neighboring comment): I am not trying to measure who is (was) worse. The thing is that the USSR had their arguments to carry their propaganda on for several decades. And their people believed them more or less.
confuzatron 16y ago
He's confused when he compares the Soviet Union with Al Quaeda, and proposes that Al Quaeda is popular due to the loss of moral superiority of the US. A more sensible comparison would be Soviet Union versus some hypothetical repressive theocratic 'caliphate' that Al Quaeda would like to set up. No doubt the unfortunate subjects of such a system would end up feeling the same way as the unfortunate subjects of the Soviet Union. I agree with him that the US should export their values. Unfortunately if they do more than talk then they are going to come up against people who will violently oppose such a project, and then he'll be denouncing the US as the evil empire again, regardless of the conduct of the opposers. PS: I feel like there's a lot of spittle flying around in this thread!
gyardley 16y ago
A nonsensical screed, since the nations of Western Europe have also been the targets of radical Islamic terrorist groups. For example, what should the Danes have done to prevent the bombing of the Danish embassy in Pakistan in 2008? What heinous action did they commit to lose their 'moral superiority' like the Americans? Since there's no Danish Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib to point to, might I respectfully suggest the reasons for these attacks aren't quite as simple as the author would suggest? As for whether the actions of Bradley Manning will result in the deaths of American soldiers or Afghan informants - I suspect none of us here has the ability to properly evaluate this, and neither does the author of the article.
- borism 16y ago
  there's a simple reason for attack on Danish Embassy and you must be perfectly aware of it. I was in a moderate islamic country when the cartoons were published and shall I say it was not a comfortable feeling when communicating with locals.
  - gyardley 16y ago
    Yes, of course I'm aware of it. Just as I'm aware of the simple reason for the attempts on Salman Rushdie's life. Now read the parent article, which praises an earlier United States - one that had not yet lost its 'moral authority', which primarily consisted of its superior freedom and civil liberties. If the author's logic is correct, the United States could reduce terrorism by regaining and retaining its moral authority. Yet both the Danish attack and the fatwa against Rushdie were specifically directed against people exercising their civil liberties, the same civil liberties that the author argues were an essential component of the American 'moral authority' that ultimately undermined the USSR. This is why the author's article is an anti-American screed. However repugnant we might find Abu Ghirab, and whatever our opinions about the war in Iraq, these events are not the root cause of Islamic terrorism in the West.
    - borism 16y ago
      nowhere did the author claim they're the reason. they just don't help things. besides, could you name "western country" not part of the "coalition of the willing" that has seen similar increase in terrorist attacks?
z92 16y ago
Excellent read.
patrickk 16y ago
"Republicans don't actually stand for anything, they're just really good at winning elections". This is a quote from the movie Boogieman: The Lee Atwater Story. (Lee Atwater was a Republican spin-doctor who influenced Karl Rove, the man who helped Bush get elected.) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1262863/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1262863/ It seems to me when people vote the Republicans into power that America slides backwards for those years. ps. I'm not American, so I don't really care one way or the other who America elects as president, as long as he (or she) leaves my country alone.
lionhearted 16y ago
> Things changed drastically under John Kennedy, and even more under Lyndon Johnson. Whoa, Lyndon B. Johnson? You'd have to have severe blinders on to like him, he's probably the worst President since the post-WWII era. Increased war, crime, corruption, poverty (ironically), dysfunction, bureaucracy... dude combines the worst aspects of both parties. He massively screwed our international relations in a very corrupt fashion to increase his votes among unions. This wasn't public until after his presidency: > In retrospect, audio tapes from the Johnson White House, revealed a quid pro quo unrelated to chicken. In January 1964, President Johnson attempted to convince United Auto Workers's president Walter Reuther not to initiate a strike just prior the 1964 election and to support the president's civil rights platform. Reuther in turn wanted Johnson to respond to Volkswagen's increased shipments to the United States.[39] The Chicken Tax directly curtailed importation of German-built Volkswagen Type 2 vans in configurations that qualified them as light trucks—that is, commercial vans and pickups.[39] "In 1964 U.S. imports of "automobile trucks" from West Germany declined to a value of $5.7 million—about one-third the value imported in the previous year. Soon after, Volkswagen cargo vans and pickup trucks, the intended targets, "practically disappeared from the U.S. market."[38] Vietnam, of course. Immigration Act of '65, which had a good spirit but terrible bureaucratic implementation and very poorly thought out. Great Society - all of which pretty much backfired. You know when you hear rappers say "I'm from the projects", meaning really dangerous crime-ridden drugged out zones? Yeah, that was LBJ's "Great Housing Projects" - this destroyed black communities, reduced black ownership of business, and coincided with massive increases in violent black on black crime, black on white crime, and addictive drug use. Gun control. Riots. "Hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" about Vietnam. "At Kennedy's death, there were 16,000 American military advisors in Vietnam. As President, Lyndon Johnson immediately reversed his predecessor's order to withdraw 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963... Johnson expanded the numbers and roles of the American military following the Gulf of Tonkin Incident ... The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the President the exclusive right to use military force without consulting the Senate, was based on a false pretext, as Johnson later admitted.[62] It was Johnson who began America's direct involvement in the ground war in Vietnam. By 1968, over 550,000 American soldiers were inside Vietnam." Should I keep going? Seriously, who was worse than LBJ? Carter or G.W.? Not even close. LBJ was the worst of Carter and GW combined. As a result of his policies, America's budgets, politics, immigration policy, international relations, military all got screwed up, massively increased corruption and bureaucracy, and increased poverty violence and drug use in black communities. He gets credit for the Civil Rights Act, but it was already done under Kennedy's watch at that point. Clearly the worst President in the post-WWII era. How anyone could think he did anything right is beyond me. You'd have to believe in what he said was his goal as opposed to the real outcomes.

44 points by loxs 16y ago

America's supposed moral superiority depended quite a bit on believing the rhetoric and ignoring both our foreign policy (support for anti-democratic forces in Iran, Iraq, Central & South America, Africa) and our internal problems (civil rights, income inequality).

rdtsc 16y ago
> America's supposed moral superiority depended quite a bit on believing the rhetoric... That is one thing that America excels at -- propaganda. Along with some other so called "democracies", it can at the same time install brutal regimes, kill and start wars all over the world _and_ somehow mentain its relatively stable propaganda image as a "peacemaker", "example of democracy", "human rights advocate" and so on. Anyone who studies history or is seriously interested in the current world affairs will recognize the propaganda for what it is. But interestingly enough, very few Americans do. A lot of them have a very skewed image about their own country, they believe in "moral supperiority" that US has over any other country in the world. The level of self-censorship and delusion even among "educated" intellectuals, the media, the majority of the population is astounding. In the ex-Soviet Union, we knew propaganda was propaganda. Except for some really crazy people, nobody believed in the system. Even those at the top. For example, it was interesting to observe how ex KGB agents, supposedly the ones most devoted to the communist cause, became uber-capatillists practically overnight in the quick grab of power and resources after the collapse.
- locopati 16y ago
  I suspect some of the political upheaval in America is growing from the disjunction between American ideals with American reality (taking many forms of expression - Tea Party, nativism, corporatism, escapism, back-to-the-land movements, localism).
  - bpyne 16y ago
    What are the back-to-the-land and localism movements?
    - borism 16y ago
      back-to-the-land is probably what it says - "back-to-the-land" localism is probably communitarianism
    - locopati 16y ago
      I see young people buying farms as a form of back-to-the-land. Localism seems to capture eating locally grown foods & buying locally made goods. Not saying these are real movements with web sites and books about them, just words to capture trends.
      - sophacles 16y ago
        They are real movements with websites and books about them. "buy local", "food not lawns", "locavore" are sample phrases to google for.
      - bpyne 16y ago
        I was pretty sure that's what you meant by "localism" but didn't realize this purchasing tendency had been raised to the level of an "ism". My family and I started going in this direction around 10 years ago. To be clear, we prefer locally grown and made goods, but we like variety in our diet, so we happily purchase food that is out of season locally. Back-to-the-land is a new one for me. I didn't realize young people were eschewing modern office life for farming. It's a very respectable choice.
- patrickk 16y ago
  A video about the CIA's covert wars in the 3rd world (six million dead): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R8gKQGmoao http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R8gKQGmoao
  - rdtsc 16y ago
    Thank you

jessriedel 16y ago

Is this worth reading? I stopped after the ridiculous claim that "If you can pay peanuts, you can produce tanks and ICBMs that cost peanuts." I mean, if a small band of hunter-gatherers is led by a single tribal leader with complete power, he can pay them nothing. But that doesn't mean he can make ICBMs for peanuts. Likewise, the US had objectively more economic power than the USSR, and, assuming that the USSR had to maintain military parity with the US to remain stable, it would be quite possible for the US to beat the USSR by out-producing it. (I'm not enough of a student of history to know if this is actually what happened.) Yes, things can be misleading if you use straight exchange rates, but that doesn't mean it was logically impossible for the US to out-spend an authoritarian government.

xutopia 16y ago
I thought it was worth reading. Obviously his expressions and grammar mistakes show English is not his first language but the point he makes is worth spending the time.
rdtsc 16y ago
> I mean, if a small band of hunter-gatherers is led by a single tribal leader with complete power, he can pay them nothing. But that doesn't mean he can make ICBMs for peanuts. Why not? He captures or pays off someone from US who has the know-how, and if he has an industrial base, natural resources they sure can do it. That is what the soviets did. A lot of their technology was pirated from the West. The atomic bomb, or most of the computer chips and operating systems (by the late 70s).
bad_user 16y ago
If those hunter-gatherers are amongst the world's top scientists, then of course you can produce tanks and ICBMs for peanuts. And USSR had plenty of scientists and natural resources ;)
- jerf 16y ago
  Wealth and money aren't the same. They're related, but they don't freely interconvert, and are generally people overestimate the degree to which they are related. Building ICBMs requires not just money, but wealth. Infrastructure, the ability to divert your smartest people to building ICBMs because they aren't needed to solve "the food problem", ability to create a system where smart people can become educated, etc. Communism is a system in which the government basically has all the money, but it isn't very good at producing wealth. Wealth is produced by the aggregation of countless little local decisions and communism is absolutely terrible at making those local decisions. So even though the government basically has all the money, it was in a system that didn't have a lot of wealth. The USSR had plenty of scientists and natural resources, but they were embedded in a system that couldn't produce enough wealth to compete. The US ultimately, for all the sound and fury surrounding the military expenditures of the 1980s, was building its military out of the leftovers of its budget. A much less wealthy system couldn't even keep up with a fraction of the wealth the US had, regardless of how much money it may have controlled.

kiba 16y ago

The whole idea that the USSR central planning policy result in economic decline is bunk? I am suddenly reminded of Paul Samuelson and his economic textbook touting the idea that the Soviet economy will surpass the USA's economy. Of course, it never came true.

protomyth 16y ago
For a really simple way to illustrate how bad the USSR central planning was, look no further than some big companies IT shops. Managers not trained in the specific area and very mistrustful / contemptuous of the actual workers giving orders; defining process and schedule; and telling the workers what "best practices" is. Now, imagine this crud applied to farms and factories.

forinti 16y ago

As a Latin-American, I laugh at the notion that the US have any sort of moral authority. In fact, many communist movements in LA actually came to be in response to oppression administered from Washington; if you had a nasty dictator propped up by the US and the only people who would help were in Moscow, then your best bet would be to become a communist, just as the Croats cozied up to the Nazis in order to get rid of the Serbs.

loxs 16y ago
Of course, this might be the case with Latin America, I have no knowledge of the situation down there. But for us, Easter-Europeans, USA was really the better alternative to USSR
- forinti 16y ago
  You don't always have the best alternatives available to you, even if you were clairvoyant enough to distinguish them. Would you say the russians were fools to embrace communism when they lived in a feudal system? The communist resistance in Europe started even before the US entered the war. Maybe if the US hadn't taken so long, things might have turned out different for the eastern bloc. Then again they might have taken a bashing for not being prepared and you would be under nazi rule still today.
jargon 16y ago
I was reading a book about Roads that talks about roads from brazil to the pacific. The author mentions a story about seeing a teen in South America, Venezuela iirc, wearing a t-shirt with bin laden's picture on it and the author asked the kid why he is wearing the shirt. The teen says, "Because he is a defender of the world's poor." Is this how people in South America see the war? Rich people killing poor people? Is Bin Laden really revered down there like this? I'm not trying to take sides, just curious about it because I can't even imagine someone wearing a bin laden t-shirt here. Is bin Laden the new Che in South America?
- forinti 16y ago

xutopia 16y ago

That was one heck of a good read. I wished more blogs had this kind of content. I'm saddened that a lot of people will not read it because it is so long though.

itistoday 16y ago

Excellent read! My favorite paragraph: The people from Western Europe would not go on a jihad. However, during the last decade their opinion on the USA plummeted, too. Twenty years ago, if you were an American in Berlin, you would be revered, and more honored than the Berliners around… Not anymore. Now, you can often hear: “The country that lied to the entire world about the Iraqi WMD? That created and still maintains the Guantanamo gulag? That ran Abu Graib? That bombed to destruction the civilians in Faluja? That shot the Italian hostage resque mission? That killed the BBC journalists in Baghdad? That photographs, fingerprints and tracks every visitor like a criminal? That created the ECHELON system? That is killing in Afghanistan maybe more civilians than terrorists?… If it is decent, then Stalin is, too. This country is a blemish to the humankind." Although it's really hard to pick, you should just read the entire thing. If you still prefer the reader's digest: … Remember the great support Obama had among the ordinary people abroad before the president elections? Especially in Europe? There is a reason for this support. The ordinary people hoped that he will restore the US moral superiority, by bringing moral to the US politics… He failed to do it. The Guantanamo gulag stays. Some measures are taken to prevent the worst things the US Army does abroad – however, the “culture of concealment” is stronger than ever. Slowly, but surely one trend emerges and grows in the thinking of the people outside US. Namely, that this state has gone too far on the Evil Empire road. That it cannot be stopped anymore, even by a good-intended President. And that it is better late than never to say openly: “Things changed. This is not anymore the moral leader of the world – this is just another evil empire. One that the decent people must hate, loathe and oppose to.” What will happen if this trend of thinking prevails? Easy guess. Al-Qaeda will grow and attract more and more people, and will probably obstruct more of the US activity abroad. In fact, it may gain enough support to carry its fight on American soil. The support for US in Europe and the rest of the world will gradually diminish, to the extent that even the pro-US politicians will have to become blind and deaf to the USA needs. And very surely there will be new “cold wars” – economic, cultural etc. – between USA and some other countries, but it will not be possible anymore to win them through moral superiority. [.. snip ..] To preserve moral superiority, the US must first learn what is the correct move in situations like the current one. Whether Wikileaks is its enemy, or the best friend they can find – one that is brave enough to tell you you have a nasty problem, and to press on you to solve it on time. And whether people like Mike Mullen are its best servants, or its best enemies – the ones that tell you “There is no problem, continue this way, people will never learn of the crimes, truth never comes out”. If you are still not sure which is the correct position, ask one truly outstanding soldier – Gen. David Petraeus. He will surely be able to tell you the truth… Actually, you can tell it yourself, by using his simple principle – which action decreases the number of your enemies, and increases the number of your friends.

te_platt 16y ago

So the Soviets under Stalin murdered 10's of millions before 1950 but maintained moral equivalence with the United States until JFK was elected? I guess I have a different sense of morality.

loxs 16y ago
You know, things like nuking whole cities do count when measuring moral. Not that USSR was highly moral, just the opposite. USA was not too moral that days.
- protomyth 16y ago
  As opposed to fire bombing a whole country or doing death marches?
  - loxs 16y ago
    I am not trying to measure who is (was) worse. The thing is that the USSR had their arguments to carry their propaganda on for several decades. And their people believed them more or less.
- te_platt 16y ago
  You know, things like making a decision between ending a hellish war by killing millions or by killing hundreds of thousands (was there another option?) is terrible thing to have to do. Making a calculated political decision to murder millions just isn't in the same category. I don't want to justify any of the wrongdoings of anyone based on "the other guy is worse". I also don't accept that the United States was morally equivalent to the Soviet Union until JFK was elected.
  - loxs 16y ago
    As I said (in the neighboring comment): I am not trying to measure who is (was) worse. The thing is that the USSR had their arguments to carry their propaganda on for several decades. And their people believed them more or less.

confuzatron 16y ago

He's confused when he compares the Soviet Union with Al Quaeda, and proposes that Al Quaeda is popular due to the loss of moral superiority of the US. A more sensible comparison would be Soviet Union versus some hypothetical repressive theocratic 'caliphate' that Al Quaeda would like to set up. No doubt the unfortunate subjects of such a system would end up feeling the same way as the unfortunate subjects of the Soviet Union. I agree with him that the US should export their values. Unfortunately if they do more than talk then they are going to come up against people who will violently oppose such a project, and then he'll be denouncing the US as the evil empire again, regardless of the conduct of the opposers. PS: I feel like there's a lot of spittle flying around in this thread!

gyardley 16y ago

A nonsensical screed, since the nations of Western Europe have also been the targets of radical Islamic terrorist groups. For example, what should the Danes have done to prevent the bombing of the Danish embassy in Pakistan in 2008? What heinous action did they commit to lose their 'moral superiority' like the Americans? Since there's no Danish Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib to point to, might I respectfully suggest the reasons for these attacks aren't quite as simple as the author would suggest? As for whether the actions of Bradley Manning will result in the deaths of American soldiers or Afghan informants - I suspect none of us here has the ability to properly evaluate this, and neither does the author of the article.

borism 16y ago
there's a simple reason for attack on Danish Embassy and you must be perfectly aware of it. I was in a moderate islamic country when the cartoons were published and shall I say it was not a comfortable feeling when communicating with locals.
- gyardley 16y ago
  Yes, of course I'm aware of it. Just as I'm aware of the simple reason for the attempts on Salman Rushdie's life. Now read the parent article, which praises an earlier United States - one that had not yet lost its 'moral authority', which primarily consisted of its superior freedom and civil liberties. If the author's logic is correct, the United States could reduce terrorism by regaining and retaining its moral authority. Yet both the Danish attack and the fatwa against Rushdie were specifically directed against people exercising their civil liberties, the same civil liberties that the author argues were an essential component of the American 'moral authority' that ultimately undermined the USSR. This is why the author's article is an anti-American screed. However repugnant we might find Abu Ghirab, and whatever our opinions about the war in Iraq, these events are not the root cause of Islamic terrorism in the West.
  - borism 16y ago
    nowhere did the author claim they're the reason. they just don't help things. besides, could you name "western country" not part of the "coalition of the willing" that has seen similar increase in terrorist attacks?

z92 16y ago

Excellent read.

patrickk 16y ago

"Republicans don't actually stand for anything, they're just really good at winning elections". This is a quote from the movie Boogieman: The Lee Atwater Story. (Lee Atwater was a Republican spin-doctor who influenced Karl Rove, the man who helped Bush get elected.) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1262863/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1262863/ It seems to me when people vote the Republicans into power that America slides backwards for those years. ps. I'm not American, so I don't really care one way or the other who America elects as president, as long as he (or she) leaves my country alone.

lionhearted 16y ago

> Things changed drastically under John Kennedy, and even more under Lyndon Johnson. Whoa, Lyndon B. Johnson? You'd have to have severe blinders on to like him, he's probably the worst President since the post-WWII era. Increased war, crime, corruption, poverty (ironically), dysfunction, bureaucracy... dude combines the worst aspects of both parties. He massively screwed our international relations in a very corrupt fashion to increase his votes among unions. This wasn't public until after his presidency: > In retrospect, audio tapes from the Johnson White House, revealed a quid pro quo unrelated to chicken. In January 1964, President Johnson attempted to convince United Auto Workers's president Walter Reuther not to initiate a strike just prior the 1964 election and to support the president's civil rights platform. Reuther in turn wanted Johnson to respond to Volkswagen's increased shipments to the United States.[39] The Chicken Tax directly curtailed importation of German-built Volkswagen Type 2 vans in configurations that qualified them as light trucks—that is, commercial vans and pickups.[39] "In 1964 U.S. imports of "automobile trucks" from West Germany declined to a value of $5.7 million—about one-third the value imported in the previous year. Soon after, Volkswagen cargo vans and pickup trucks, the intended targets, "practically disappeared from the U.S. market."[38] Vietnam, of course. Immigration Act of '65, which had a good spirit but terrible bureaucratic implementation and very poorly thought out. Great Society - all of which pretty much backfired. You know when you hear rappers say "I'm from the projects", meaning really dangerous crime-ridden drugged out zones? Yeah, that was LBJ's "Great Housing Projects" - this destroyed black communities, reduced black ownership of business, and coincided with massive increases in violent black on black crime, black on white crime, and addictive drug use. Gun control. Riots. "Hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" about Vietnam. "At Kennedy's death, there were 16,000 American military advisors in Vietnam. As President, Lyndon Johnson immediately reversed his predecessor's order to withdraw 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963... Johnson expanded the numbers and roles of the American military following the Gulf of Tonkin Incident ... The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the President the exclusive right to use military force without consulting the Senate, was based on a false pretext, as Johnson later admitted.[62] It was Johnson who began America's direct involvement in the ground war in Vietnam. By 1968, over 550,000 American soldiers were inside Vietnam." Should I keep going? Seriously, who was worse than LBJ? Carter or G.W.? Not even close. LBJ was the worst of Carter and GW combined. As a result of his policies, America's budgets, politics, immigration policy, international relations, military all got screwed up, massively increased corruption and bureaucracy, and increased poverty violence and drug use in black communities. He gets credit for the Civil Rights Act, but it was already done under Kennedy's watch at that point. Clearly the worst President in the post-WWII era. How anyone could think he did anything right is beyond me. You'd have to believe in what he said was his goal as opposed to the real outcomes.