Gratitude
A quote from President Bush’s 60 Minutes interview a week or so ago has been percolating away in my mind, as I think about how in some ways little has changed in the last 80-100 years in U.S. policy. Here is the quote:
We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude. That's the problem here in America: They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq.
In my U.S.-Latin American Relations class, just today we discussed U.S. intervention in the early twentieth century, which helps us understand the resentment that built up in a number of countries (most notably in Cuba and Nicaragua). A major theme at the time, which was bipartisan, was that Latin Americans should be grateful for our efforts, and we wondered why in the world they kept fighting against us. We had invaded and occupied for their own good to teach them how to run their countries, policy makers believed, so why can’t we convince them of that?
Secretary of War Elihu Root talking about Cubans in 1901: there would never be independence “if they continue to exhibit ingratitude and entire lack of appreciation of the expenditure of blood and treasure of the United States to secure their freedom from Spain.”
--Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States, 1998, p. 150
A State Department official spoke in 1926 about Central America: “If the United States has received but little gratitude, this is only to be expected in a world where gratitude is rarely accorded to the teacher, the doctor, or the policeman, and we have been all three.”
--Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 1984, p. 301
4 comments:
The US government is fond of positioning US intervention as "liberation" or "creating freedom". That is all fine and well, but what Washington never admits is that we intervene in global hotspots only to support our own self interests, and nothing more. We don't intervene because we are good guys. There are too many other problems in the world (Sudan, Haiti, etc) where the US military is nowhere to be found.
Interestingly, most non-US citizens and their press corps seem to recognize the fact that the US acts in its own self interest, but the American people cling to the notion that we're out fighting wars because we are good guys who want to help free the world from tyranny.
And the issue of gratitude takes it even one step further. Not only do we cling to the notion, but we want other countries to tell us how great we are for intervening, and we get mad when it doesn't happen.
I there any example of a country that has obtained 'freedom' and 'democracy' as a direct result of outside intervention/invasion, as the US tried in the cases you mention?
Very interesting question. Japan and Germany are the most prominent cases, but are obviously not the result of unilateral action. Other examples of invasion, like the Dominican Republic and Panama, have ultimately become highly imperfect democracies (much corruption, etc.) but one wonders whether that happened in spite of U.S. action.
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