http://www.nydailynews.com/02-03-2003/news/story/56760p-53128c.html
It's not easy being red, white & blue
The United States might consider changing its motto from "E Pluribus Unum" to "Damned If We Do and Damned If We Don't." That's because this nation - guardian of liberty, defender of freedom, protector of the weak, champion of the oppressed - can do no right. However just the cause, no matter the U.S. contribution to world order - including the sacrifice of its sons and daughters - America is condemned around the globe. As a friend said the other day, "Why can't they understand that we're the good guys?"
Why, indeed? No nation in history has done more to help mankind. And none has been hated so blindly and rabidly. Saturday's space shuttle tragedy has engendered a spate of world sympathy. But the America-haters will quickly reemerge.
America does not seek to conquer. Or to control. Or to enslave. The only rule it wants is the rule of law. It seeks peace but knows that sometimes war is necessary. As President Bush said in his State of the Union address last week, "A future lived at the mercy of terrible threats is no peace at all."
Here's another quote, this one from Nelson Mandela: "If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America." Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he has decided, forever negated America's moral authority.
Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding, Mandela has a feeble grasp on history. But we thank him for speaking out. Because he has given voice to the vicious anti-Americanism that has poisoned minds - and generations - far and wide. Muttered in the Arab street (or on the French boulevard), such mouthings make no news. Spewed by an individual who should, among all people, understand the repugnance of unbridled bigotry and malevolence, they create headlines.
We can use the occasional reminder of how much we are hated. Because we cannot truly understand that hatred, there is the constant danger of becoming complacent. And better a reminder in distasteful words than the kind that comes with hijacked planes, buildings in ruins and human beings in ashes. One wonders where that ranks on Mandela's list of unspeakable atrocities.
America is hated even though it shares its wealth, monetary and otherwise. Consider the billions in foreign aid, every cent of which comes from taxpayers' pockets. Consider the willingness to defend emergent democracies, because democracy is the enemy of dictatorship, corruption, anarchy, subjugation and genocide. Consider the fact that America truly and firmly believes in and promotes the brotherhood and equality of man, the nobility of truth, the sanctity of individual rights.
As Bush also noted in his speech, "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity." And this: The "call of history has come to the right country."
As always, America will answer. And America will be denounced. And vilified. And the mobs with hatred in their hearts and blood on their hands will trample our flag and rail against our values and scream for the sacrifice of our innocents.
And America will answer all that, too. By standing firm, secure in the knowledge that - no matter the enemy - this nation will prevail. We are, after all, the good guys.
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