Has America Learned Its Lessons?

Has America Learned Its Lessons?

The United States has provided me with a source of fascination and amusement for over forty years, ever since I saw my first 'Cowboys and Indians' film when I was barely five years old.

I used to watch John Wayne and his pals fighting off the pesky Indians, dodging hatchets and arrows whilst making very bullet hit its redskin target, feathers flying as the savage braves bit the dust. It wasn't until much later that I learned about the destruction of the bison and the eviction of native Americans from their homelands which cost thousands of lives from disease, cold and starvation.

As I grew older I progressed to war films and was fed hours of monochrome footage depicting every battle, every victory and every hero as being American led or resourced. Every tank and gun had an American flag on it. Every touching scene with a grateful villager thanking the liberating soldier through a haze of tears and chewing gum was American. At some point in my early school life, and when my father thought I was old enough to know about his wartime experiences in India and Singapore, I discovered that we and the French were in fact fighting the war on our own until December 1941 when the USA was dragged kicking and screaming into the conflict after Pearl Harbour.

The 1950s, the decade of my birth, saw America helping to stop the communists in Korea which, unlike Iraq, had the full backing of the United Nations and much international co-operation from countries such as Britain, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa. Just as well since China joined in to support North Korea, and two years passed before an armistice was signed in July 1953. It was an ideological conflict, the free democratic world against the oppressive commies, and the outcome was bloody, but at least the final outcome was peaceful.

Whether it was the ego boost that the Korean victory brought, or some kind of national amnesia, but America somehow lost its sense of humility over the following decade. Vietnam raised its head and President Johnson came to the conclusion in August 1964 that America could succeed against the communists where both Japan and France had failed. The quantity of ego that must have been involved in keeping a pointless war going for nearly nine years until the Paris Peace Accord in January 1973 always astounds me.

Let us now jump forward to 2001 when America decided to drop in on Afghanistan to kick out the Taliban with the intent of bringing democracy and sex equality to its beleaguered citizens. This temporal gap ignoring the CIA's involvement in setting up surveillance equipment in the territory during 1979 to spy on Russia by consent of Afghanistan's then barbaric ruler Babrac Kemal. Unfortunately, although life for the populous around Kabul has indeed improved, much of the rest of the country has since reverted to war lord rule and women are back under the male chauvinist thumb.

So what did America learn from this waste of time, resources and human lives? Well, it learned to elect a President who was determined to show that he was a big brave boy who could finish off what his daddy had started. It allowed the invasion of a country on grounds since proven to be false, the propagation of the myth of a grateful, benign post war population, and the reluctant publication of pictures which demonstrated the true price of bolstering junior's family standing.

Where does this sorry string of events leave us today? Well, from a European perspective we would hope that the embarrassment of Afghanistan and Iraq would at last teach America that Uncle Sam does not always know best, and that 5% of the world's population does not have the patriarchal right to interfere in the governance of the remaining 95%.

Yes, there are some regimes that need to be contained, and some rulers that should be removed for the sake of humanity and world peace. But we have the United Nations conveniently located in New York to handle such matters, even if that variegated institution does sometimes take a little longer to act than we would like. So America, why not stop trying to be the world's nanny and concentrate instead on more important domestic issues such as pollution control, energy consumption and medical care. Those 1950s war films were fiction you know, not documentaries - honest!



	The United States has provided me with a source of fascination and amusement for over forty years, ever since I saw my first 'Cowboys and Indians' film when I was barely five years old. I used to watch John Wayne and his pals fighting off the pesky Indians, dodging hatchets and arrows whilst making very bullet hit its redskin target, feathers flying as the savage braves bit the dust. It wasn't until much later that I learned about the destruction of the bison and the eviction of native Americans from their homelands which cost thousands of lives from disease, cold and starvation. As I grew older I progressed to war films and was fed hours of monochrome footage depicting every battle, every victory and every hero as being American led or resourced. Every tank and gun had an American flag on it. Every touching scene with a grateful villager thanking the liberating soldier through a haze of tears and chewing gum was American. At some point in my early school life, and when my father thought I was old enough to know about his wartime experiences in India and Singapore, I discovered that we and the French were in fact fighting the war on our own until December 1941 when the USA was dragged kicking and screaming into the conflict after Pearl Harbour. The 1950s, the decade of my birth, saw America helping to stop the communists in Korea which, unlike Iraq, had the full backing of the United Nations and much international co-operation from countries such as Britain, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa. Just as well since China joined in to support North Korea, and two years passed before an armistice was signed in July 1953. It was an ideological conflict, the free democratic world against the oppressive commies, and the outcome was bloody, but at least the final outcome was peaceful. Whether it was the ego boost that the Korean victory brought, or some kind of national amnesia, but America somehow lost its sense of humility over the following decade. Vietnam raised its head and President Johnson came to the conclusion in August 1964 that America could succeed against the communists where both Japan and France had failed. The quantity of ego that must have been involved in keeping a pointless war going for nearly nine years until the Paris Peace Accord in January 1973 always astounds me. Let us now jump forward to 2001 when America decided to drop in on Afghanistan to kick out the Taliban with the intent of bringing democracy and sex equality to its beleaguered citizens. This temporal gap ignoring the CIA's involvement in setting up surveillance equipment in the territory during 1979 to spy on Russia by consent of Afghanistan's then barbaric ruler Babrac Kemal. Unfortunately, although life for the populous around Kabul has indeed improved, much of the rest of the country has since reverted to war lord rule and women are back under the male chauvinist thumb. So what did America learn from this waste of time, resources and human lives? Well, it learned to elect a President who was determined to show that he was a big brave boy who could finish off what his daddy had started. It allowed the invasion of a country on grounds since proven to be false, the propagation of the myth of a grateful, benign post war population, and the reluctant publication of pictures which demonstrated the true price of bolstering junior's family standing. Where does this sorry string of events leave us today? Well, from a European perspective we would hope that the embarrassment of Afghanistan and Iraq would at last teach America that Uncle Sam does not always know best, and that 5% of the world's population does not have the patriarchal right to interfere in the governance of the remaining 95%. Yes, there are some regimes that need to be contained, and some rulers that should be removed for the sake of humanity and world peace. But we have the United Nations conveniently located in New York to handle such matters, even if that variegated institution does sometimes take a little longer to act than we would like. So America, why not stop trying to be the world's nanny and concentrate instead on more important domestic issues such as pollution control, energy consumption and medical care. Those 1950s war films were fiction you know, not documentaries - honest!