Democracy or Americanization?

"President Bush has put the idea of spreading democracy around the world at the rhetorical heart of American foreign policy. . .
The best role for critics in the President's second term will be not to scoff at the idea of spreading freedom but to take it seriously - to hold him to his own talk. The hard question isn't whether America should try to enlarge the democratic order, but how."

-- George Packer in The New Yorker, December 20 & 27, 2004 (Comment: Invasion vs. Persuasion)

Colour me blue and call me liberal if you really must, but I do appreciate Michael Moore. However biased or inaccurate he may be at times, few can argue that, with "Fahrenheit 9/11", he re-popularized dissent.

And yes, I believe that's a good thing, because it appears that America badly needed a wake-up call to reclaim its roots. Despite what the O'Reillys and Gibsons of the world would have us believe, dissent is not the new terrorism. On the contrary, it is what has always made America beautiful.

After all, you don't have to agree with everything Moore says. That's the great thing! Just to be able to disagree, and to believe that the act of doing so contributes to the continual fine-tuning and upgrading of our democracy, is what has (historically) made America the envy of the world.

What freaks the world out is not the (yes, sometimes trivial, other times dubious) criticisms of America's Left, but the almost religious "patriotism" of the Right.

"You can't root against your country in Iraq and still be a loyal American, period", says Bill O'Reilly. O'Really? When did lack of dissent become the defining attribute of an "American"? Is anybody else confused by the Right's version of democracy?

If Right-leaning media really speaks for the current U.S. Administration, one could be forgiven for asking: Is U.S. foreign policy really about democratizing the world, or simply about Americanizing it?

International affairs specialist John Ikenberry claims to already know the answer, stating that U.S. policy going back to Wilson, "begins with a fundamental commitment to maintaining a unipolar world in which the United States has no peer competitor", a situation which is to be "permanent [so] that no state or coalition could ever challenge [America] as global leader, protector, and enforcer."1

I don't want to believe Ikenberry when he says that the current strategy "presents the United States [as] a revisionist state seeking to parlay its momentary advantages into a world order in which it runs the show." But I'm really having trouble disagreeing with him.

And I love America!

Now that I think about it, I resent having to even say that. It bugs me that I have to defend myself against charges of anti-Americanism simply because I register concern with some things America does. I mean, is this where we've come to? After nearly 230 years of the great democratic experiment, is 21st-century America really no further beyond, and possibly even a step or two behind, its forefathers on the defining ideas of free speech and dissent?

It is this rush to marginalize dissenters that makes me wonder if it's really global democracy that U.S. foreign policy is aiming for, or if Ikenberry is right: that democracy is merely a cover for good old-fashined imperialism.

If he's wrong, then American leaders (and their media-based supporters) should welcome dissent (not only from the Moores and Stewarts, but from U.S. war veterans and families as well) as the best evidence of success. That Moore's "F9/11" was not completely blocked from release was a good sign, but I think politicians and media execs need to do more.

Blind support of America's actions in Iraq and elsewhere, whereby critics are villified and "defenders" praised, naturally leads the world to question America's motives. And no, dammit, that doesn't mean we're hateful or jealous. Just deeply concerned, because, hey, this affects us too.

I know O'Reilly and crew would love to argue that their rantings are simply one form of dissent in the thriving democracy that is America. But their comments don't merely disagree with opposite views: they marshall against the act of dissent itself, dissent in principle. They imply that criticism of the Administration is, in and of itself, un-American.

I really hope America's leaders don't agree. I concur with Packer's quote that starts this article: the time is past to simply throw rocks at Bush for going into Iraq. For better or worse, he's there. The task of the dissenter now is to make sure that when he says "democracy" in his speeches, it's actually democracy that Iraq (and the world) end up with.

It just might have helped to asked them if they wanted democracy in the first place. After all, wasn't it their democractic right to have a say in the matter?

1 John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs, September-October 2002