In the absence of better information over the last 20 years, Americans learned the lessons explicitly taught by our adversaries when it came to US foreign intervention. As Gary says, we learned all the wrong lessons.
The explosion of the Internet cemented this worldview, once again in an information environment that lacked critics and opposition. An entire generation of Americans were raised to reflexively oppose any and all intervention no matter the cause, even the removal of a psychotic tyrant at the request of his own people.
My worldview has matured the more I realize that the early age of the internet I grew up experiencing was an echo chamber. An entire side of the debate was missing. Strategists and realists were booed out of every chat room and comment section.
Seems to me that there's been a lot less "reflexive outrage" over Dear Leader's Iran ramblings and threats than about most of his fuckery. If anything, I'm hearing criticism over his anticipated TACO non-support for protestors. Thousands of dead protestors already.
After the recent Venezuela whatever-you-call-it, what should non-cultists think? No apparent benefits for Venezuelans, no benefits for US, outside of cronies that will profit. But embrace and implementation of rapacious Russky Mir thinking and methods.
The truth is that the advocates of world-wide peace, like all reformers, should bear in mind Josh Billings's astute remark that “it is much easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent.” The worthy pacificists have completely forgotten that the Biblical injunction is two-sided and that we are bidden not only to be harmless as doves, but also to be wise as serpents. The ultra-pacificists have undoubtedly been an exceedingly harmless body so far as obtaining peace is concerned. They have exerted practically no influence in restraining wrong, although they have sometimes had a real and lamentable influence in crippling the forces of right and preventing them from dealing with wrong. An appreciable amount of good work has been done for peace by genuine lovers of peace, but it has not been done by the feeble folk of the peace movement, loquacious but impotent, who are usually unfortunately prominent in the movement and who excite the utter derision of the great powers of evil. Sincere lovers of peace who are wise have been obliged to face the fact that it is often a very complicated thing to secure peace without the sacrifice of righteousness. Furthermore, they have been obliged to face the fact that generally the only way to accomplish anything was by not trying to accomplish too much. The complicated nature of the problem is shown by the fact that some thoroughly good men believe at the present time that our duty to peace must be fulfilled by protesting against the violation of the rights secured to Belgium by treaty, while other good men point out that such a course would expose us to the accusations of abandoning our neutrality. In theory it is supposed to be our duty to uphold The Hague treaties of which we were among the signatory powers; and the pathetic believers in the all-sufficiency of signatures placed on bits of paper have believed that everything put in these treaties was forthwith guaranteed to all mankind.”
Americans have been that way as long as I can remember, and I’ve passed my half-century. Unless they have lived several years away from the US, even the best of them are US-centric, and too many are worse, disparaging other nations in a way that is not only ignorant (they don’t rely either on data, history or experience) but also petty and emotionally stunted. It’s a pity, because at their best, Americans are a credit to our common humanity. The best Americans *will* put the needs of the desperate Iranians before their own political bias, even as they hold their own politicians accountable.
This tendency, however, is typical of empires: I’ve encountered it in Chinese, Russians and older British and French people. All we can do is remind them, as you are doing here, that the sun doesn’t revolve around them.
It‘s deeply ingrained. For example, I‘ve lived in Europe for the last 13+ years but when discussing happenings in the US I have caught myself saying something is happening “here”. Nope, it’s happening there, not here. Here is an ocean away.
All that is true. But if he does help the Iranians, Americans can then hold him to account for his promises to them (as well as for his behaviour at home).
The Nobel Prize is irrelevant. It shouldn't count in the minds of people who oppose dictatorships.
If he helps the Iranian people free themselves, I do not care what his motive is. Lets see him topple the mullahs, and give him his fucking prize. I doubt that the newly free Iranians will care.
Yes, Garry Kasparov never fails to dunk on Obama, any chance he gets. Like he never fails to flattered appease/justify Trump, any chance he gets. This piece is not about the people of Iran or the people of Denmark. It's about "Obama was wrong and Trump wouldn't have to do anything if Obama had done it before him". It's always Obama's fault, where have we heard that before?! SHAME! OK, get Trump to kidnap the Ayatollah, maybe that'll help the Iranian people, just like kidnapping Maduro "helped" the Venezuelan people (BTW this reeks of a move coordinated with Putin showing that he is ready to swap Ukraine for Venezuela). What happened to Gary!!!
Maria, I didn’t read it that way at all. I read it as the lede implies - the article is about Americentrism, not whether Obama or Trump did this or that. For whatever reasons, US policies vis a vis Iran have not been successful since 1979, across all Presidents. Obama made mistakes along with some tactical successes. I supported the JCPOA, but ultimately n unfortunately it didn’t lead where it was intended; and that result happened due to many geopolitical actors n circumstances, including Obama (and Trump and the Bushes and Biden and Carter and Reagan)
Right, and my comment is about Gary Kasparov, not about “the lede”, it’s about what he says beyond “the lede”. I have known and followed Gary since the USSR days (I am his age and grew up in a USSR satellite). I have read everything he has written and watched every talk he has given since he was ousted from Putin’s Russia and my frustration and disappointment is with him and the constant bashing of Obama and constant appeasement and excuse for Trump, even today, after all we know and have seen from the Trump regime. Americentrism can be a good thing for the smaller countries like Iran or Venezuela, if the leader is of good moral character and is surrounded by professionals of good moral character. What we have now is Trumpcentrism, and I do not see or hear Gary talk about THAT.
I want to add that the US is experiencing a cold civil war that's starting to heat up. This comes in the midst of collapse. This is good in the sense that it will provide an opportunity to rebuild with new values and systems. But it's going to be difficult to survive the degradation over the next 2-8 years, I would say. Americans don't have a higher power to call on, but one. We are just as alone or more. We have to accept our life as a spirit having a human experience. Why are we here? What do we focus on? What we face is very heavy and yet it's not even about material results in the end. We have to live with ourselves.
Said cold civil war has lasted since Reconstruction was left incomplete, after President Lincoln was assassinated by a Confederacy loyalist and his successor kowtowed to the former slave-owners.
I agree with the sentiment expressed, and personally do not value any life more or less than another. There is a saying - Think globally, act locally. The Renee Good outrage is more than an expression of that. Other people, includingUS citizens, were killed by ICE before her. She, like George Floyd who was killed nearby where she was, would not die in vain. They are symbols of movements, instigators if an internal dialog that attempts to hold power accountable to certain standards by addressing double standards. Americans have very little power to stop the US Military and power elites from pushing their weight around the world. They will, however, raise this issue strongly, not because protesters on other issues in other places have less value as human beings, but because this is a fights we can take on. Maybe it will help the world, but that is not what it's about. It is an internal process, which the world can choose to observe or not.
Can you please outline how a rational and sensible US president should assist the Iranian people without the Iranian regime then retaliating by firing a barrage of missiles at Israel?
Then explain why you would encourage an irrational moron like trump to stick his nose in like he did in Venezuela without an ounce of forethought of possible consequences.
Then explain why if there is an imperative for trump to intervene in Iran, why not in Sudan, Yemen, Congo, Rwanda, Afghanistan, China and other places where brutal killing of protesters and citizens is rife?
They're going to fire missiles at Israel. It's all they can do, unless they want to fire at Orange's other Mideast allies.
That, and kill shitloads of protestors. Otherwise, they can try to kill an exiled dissident or three, or to pull off some terrorist shit in Europe, North America, etc.
As a supporter of the Trump administration, I will admit that I too am troubled by this American swagger with respect to the rest of the world and especially its treatment of long-standing allies. We can’t run a foreign policy based solely on a profit and loss calculus from every transaction. Our allies have sacrificed for their friendship with America and just because it’s smaller in absolute terms makes it no less significant. Things like insulting Canada as the “51st” state was simply childish. Threatening Denmark with possible military action to obtain Greenland is outright disgraceful. I want a strong America that projects power in the world but not one that tramples on allies if there is some minor gain to be had from it. Otherwise there will be a long-term cost to our position in the world and that will cost us economically and geopolitically.
All that stuff hasn't really mattered to you. You're still "a supporter" for the culture war shit. All because of "the transgressive and nihilistic Left." You've gobbled up kremlin-pushed boogymen, defender of western civilization. That's why you "like" and restack the hyperbolic, rabidly anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant outrage-bait.
Your profile blurb - "Australian and American, Conservative, defend western civilization and Christendom, pro-freedom, oppose the transgressive and nihilistic Left."
Spot on Gary! Partisanship has blinded so many. I would like Trump to do something that propels regime change whatever that is. Not sure his advisors and Trump can find that path. Also, it appears that the other Gulf states only want a weakened Iran, not a regime change. Trump’s money is in the Gulf. I can’t see him risking more fortune by going against the Sheiks.
This was a really great article. The American left and right have two different types of Americentrism, and Garry does a good job of diagnosing it. Although I think many of my fellow liberals support the protestors, it is not enough. The left's Americentrism causes it to blame America for any malady anywhere on the planet. It is often performative cynicism, a demonstrative exercise triangulating foreign countries' internal conflicts with mysterious American forces (you will know the sort by its symptoms, such as brandishing the name Victoria Nuland, as though she is a supernaturally and personally responsible for the collapse of half the world's governments). I am quite familiar with the left's Americentrism because that is the tradition I came from, before moving towards the center in my adulthood, a very common journey of Americans through their lives. In defense of them, I'll say that the impulse to criticize our own country and our own government's hypocrisies is an honorable one. It's just that the impulse becomes overgrown with some, and becomes reflexive, even an article of faith. That learned and insulated cynicism can become dangerous in a society, and that is why I so much appreciate the efforts of RDI and Kasparov (FRONTLINES OF FREEDOM) to bring dissidents and foreign-born victims of regimes to American schoolchildren to explain, by direct and in-person example, that there is actually plenty to love about this country, and that it is worth defending our fragile democracy. Sometimes it takes an immigrant to really convey to us that there is good cause to be patriotic and civic-minded.
In the absence of better information over the last 20 years, Americans learned the lessons explicitly taught by our adversaries when it came to US foreign intervention. As Gary says, we learned all the wrong lessons.
The explosion of the Internet cemented this worldview, once again in an information environment that lacked critics and opposition. An entire generation of Americans were raised to reflexively oppose any and all intervention no matter the cause, even the removal of a psychotic tyrant at the request of his own people.
My worldview has matured the more I realize that the early age of the internet I grew up experiencing was an echo chamber. An entire side of the debate was missing. Strategists and realists were booed out of every chat room and comment section.
Seems to me that there's been a lot less "reflexive outrage" over Dear Leader's Iran ramblings and threats than about most of his fuckery. If anything, I'm hearing criticism over his anticipated TACO non-support for protestors. Thousands of dead protestors already.
After the recent Venezuela whatever-you-call-it, what should non-cultists think? No apparent benefits for Venezuelans, no benefits for US, outside of cronies that will profit. But embrace and implementation of rapacious Russky Mir thinking and methods.
History repeating itself. Take a look what Teddy Roosevelt wrote about the subject in the NYT in 1914. It’s uncanny.
https://www.nytimes.com/1914/10/04/archives/theodore-roosevelt-on-the-danger-of-making-unwise-peace-treaties-in.html
“Feeble Peace Folk.
The truth is that the advocates of world-wide peace, like all reformers, should bear in mind Josh Billings's astute remark that “it is much easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent.” The worthy pacificists have completely forgotten that the Biblical injunction is two-sided and that we are bidden not only to be harmless as doves, but also to be wise as serpents. The ultra-pacificists have undoubtedly been an exceedingly harmless body so far as obtaining peace is concerned. They have exerted practically no influence in restraining wrong, although they have sometimes had a real and lamentable influence in crippling the forces of right and preventing them from dealing with wrong. An appreciable amount of good work has been done for peace by genuine lovers of peace, but it has not been done by the feeble folk of the peace movement, loquacious but impotent, who are usually unfortunately prominent in the movement and who excite the utter derision of the great powers of evil. Sincere lovers of peace who are wise have been obliged to face the fact that it is often a very complicated thing to secure peace without the sacrifice of righteousness. Furthermore, they have been obliged to face the fact that generally the only way to accomplish anything was by not trying to accomplish too much. The complicated nature of the problem is shown by the fact that some thoroughly good men believe at the present time that our duty to peace must be fulfilled by protesting against the violation of the rights secured to Belgium by treaty, while other good men point out that such a course would expose us to the accusations of abandoning our neutrality. In theory it is supposed to be our duty to uphold The Hague treaties of which we were among the signatory powers; and the pathetic believers in the all-sufficiency of signatures placed on bits of paper have believed that everything put in these treaties was forthwith guaranteed to all mankind.”
Americans have been that way as long as I can remember, and I’ve passed my half-century. Unless they have lived several years away from the US, even the best of them are US-centric, and too many are worse, disparaging other nations in a way that is not only ignorant (they don’t rely either on data, history or experience) but also petty and emotionally stunted. It’s a pity, because at their best, Americans are a credit to our common humanity. The best Americans *will* put the needs of the desperate Iranians before their own political bias, even as they hold their own politicians accountable.
This tendency, however, is typical of empires: I’ve encountered it in Chinese, Russians and older British and French people. All we can do is remind them, as you are doing here, that the sun doesn’t revolve around them.
It‘s deeply ingrained. For example, I‘ve lived in Europe for the last 13+ years but when discussing happenings in the US I have caught myself saying something is happening “here”. Nope, it’s happening there, not here. Here is an ocean away.
the thing that irks a lot of people is that trump does some things right for all the wrong reasons
and they don't want him to help others just to make himself look good.
if he helps the Iranian people it will only be if he thinks it will get him the Nobel peace prize.
he doesn't really care about them, only himself. he has a heart as black as coal.
All that is true. But if he does help the Iranians, Americans can then hold him to account for his promises to them (as well as for his behaviour at home).
The Nobel Prize is irrelevant. It shouldn't count in the minds of people who oppose dictatorships.
Well, that's up to American voters and congresspeople.
But the Iranians need help. They are being massacred now, after years of people so badly oppressed. The women especially.
So what? Who cares why he does it, if he does it?
I swear, if Trump told you not to drink bleach, you'd at least consider drinking it just so you can say he didn't tell you what to do.
If he helps the Iranian people free themselves, I do not care what his motive is. Lets see him topple the mullahs, and give him his fucking prize. I doubt that the newly free Iranians will care.
The big question is , what would Larry David say…and there is absolutely no need for him to exaggerate about the crazy?
America’s so nuts right now I don’t even have to complain. It’s doing the complaining for me.
Yes, Garry Kasparov never fails to dunk on Obama, any chance he gets. Like he never fails to flattered appease/justify Trump, any chance he gets. This piece is not about the people of Iran or the people of Denmark. It's about "Obama was wrong and Trump wouldn't have to do anything if Obama had done it before him". It's always Obama's fault, where have we heard that before?! SHAME! OK, get Trump to kidnap the Ayatollah, maybe that'll help the Iranian people, just like kidnapping Maduro "helped" the Venezuelan people (BTW this reeks of a move coordinated with Putin showing that he is ready to swap Ukraine for Venezuela). What happened to Gary!!!
Maria, I didn’t read it that way at all. I read it as the lede implies - the article is about Americentrism, not whether Obama or Trump did this or that. For whatever reasons, US policies vis a vis Iran have not been successful since 1979, across all Presidents. Obama made mistakes along with some tactical successes. I supported the JCPOA, but ultimately n unfortunately it didn’t lead where it was intended; and that result happened due to many geopolitical actors n circumstances, including Obama (and Trump and the Bushes and Biden and Carter and Reagan)
Right, and my comment is about Gary Kasparov, not about “the lede”, it’s about what he says beyond “the lede”. I have known and followed Gary since the USSR days (I am his age and grew up in a USSR satellite). I have read everything he has written and watched every talk he has given since he was ousted from Putin’s Russia and my frustration and disappointment is with him and the constant bashing of Obama and constant appeasement and excuse for Trump, even today, after all we know and have seen from the Trump regime. Americentrism can be a good thing for the smaller countries like Iran or Venezuela, if the leader is of good moral character and is surrounded by professionals of good moral character. What we have now is Trumpcentrism, and I do not see or hear Gary talk about THAT.
I have seen pieces on that tbf, there was one on ICE abuses just the other day.
Was it written by Gary Kasparov or by one of the multiple other contributors on this site?
Pretty sure it was Gary tbh
Well I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day…
oy
I want to add that the US is experiencing a cold civil war that's starting to heat up. This comes in the midst of collapse. This is good in the sense that it will provide an opportunity to rebuild with new values and systems. But it's going to be difficult to survive the degradation over the next 2-8 years, I would say. Americans don't have a higher power to call on, but one. We are just as alone or more. We have to accept our life as a spirit having a human experience. Why are we here? What do we focus on? What we face is very heavy and yet it's not even about material results in the end. We have to live with ourselves.
Said cold civil war has lasted since Reconstruction was left incomplete, after President Lincoln was assassinated by a Confederacy loyalist and his successor kowtowed to the former slave-owners.
Yes, it was never resolved. But there was a hotspot in the 1910s-20s, and again today with Trump.
I agree with the sentiment expressed, and personally do not value any life more or less than another. There is a saying - Think globally, act locally. The Renee Good outrage is more than an expression of that. Other people, includingUS citizens, were killed by ICE before her. She, like George Floyd who was killed nearby where she was, would not die in vain. They are symbols of movements, instigators if an internal dialog that attempts to hold power accountable to certain standards by addressing double standards. Americans have very little power to stop the US Military and power elites from pushing their weight around the world. They will, however, raise this issue strongly, not because protesters on other issues in other places have less value as human beings, but because this is a fights we can take on. Maybe it will help the world, but that is not what it's about. It is an internal process, which the world can choose to observe or not.
“To our readers on the right: show some respect for America’s friends before you find out what it’s like to live in a country that has no friends.”
Isolationism is like communism.
Every time it's been tried, it ended in disaster, yet its proponents keep pushing for it and insisting the real thing has never been tried.
'Isolationism' was a dirty word invented by FDR & Co. to smear American patriots who, unsurprisingly, thought we should stay out of Europe's affairs.
We have a fundamental disagreement going back hundreds of years
"Hundreds of years"
You can't do arithmetic.
"We have a fundamental disagreement going back hundreds of years."
Ooooooh, how oracular. How mysterious.
Lemme cut to the chase: saw your profile. No, being an Anti-American Asshool is of more recent vintage.
Personal insults indicate a lack of argument
Can you please outline how a rational and sensible US president should assist the Iranian people without the Iranian regime then retaliating by firing a barrage of missiles at Israel?
Then explain why you would encourage an irrational moron like trump to stick his nose in like he did in Venezuela without an ounce of forethought of possible consequences.
Then explain why if there is an imperative for trump to intervene in Iran, why not in Sudan, Yemen, Congo, Rwanda, Afghanistan, China and other places where brutal killing of protesters and citizens is rife?
They're going to fire missiles at Israel. It's all they can do, unless they want to fire at Orange's other Mideast allies.
That, and kill shitloads of protestors. Otherwise, they can try to kill an exiled dissident or three, or to pull off some terrorist shit in Europe, North America, etc.
As a supporter of the Trump administration, I will admit that I too am troubled by this American swagger with respect to the rest of the world and especially its treatment of long-standing allies. We can’t run a foreign policy based solely on a profit and loss calculus from every transaction. Our allies have sacrificed for their friendship with America and just because it’s smaller in absolute terms makes it no less significant. Things like insulting Canada as the “51st” state was simply childish. Threatening Denmark with possible military action to obtain Greenland is outright disgraceful. I want a strong America that projects power in the world but not one that tramples on allies if there is some minor gain to be had from it. Otherwise there will be a long-term cost to our position in the world and that will cost us economically and geopolitically.
All that stuff hasn't really mattered to you. You're still "a supporter" for the culture war shit. All because of "the transgressive and nihilistic Left." You've gobbled up kremlin-pushed boogymen, defender of western civilization. That's why you "like" and restack the hyperbolic, rabidly anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant outrage-bait.
Your profile blurb - "Australian and American, Conservative, defend western civilization and Christendom, pro-freedom, oppose the transgressive and nihilistic Left."
Too funny ...
Spot on Gary! Partisanship has blinded so many. I would like Trump to do something that propels regime change whatever that is. Not sure his advisors and Trump can find that path. Also, it appears that the other Gulf states only want a weakened Iran, not a regime change. Trump’s money is in the Gulf. I can’t see him risking more fortune by going against the Sheiks.
Right now we need regime change in the US. It's not partisanship to recognise that Trump's policies and actions are unamerican.
Great article!
Another brilliant article. Thank you very much
It’s devastating and shameful Garry. Truly have lost so much.
The trolls and bots posting abusive comments have their scripts down.
This was a really great article. The American left and right have two different types of Americentrism, and Garry does a good job of diagnosing it. Although I think many of my fellow liberals support the protestors, it is not enough. The left's Americentrism causes it to blame America for any malady anywhere on the planet. It is often performative cynicism, a demonstrative exercise triangulating foreign countries' internal conflicts with mysterious American forces (you will know the sort by its symptoms, such as brandishing the name Victoria Nuland, as though she is a supernaturally and personally responsible for the collapse of half the world's governments). I am quite familiar with the left's Americentrism because that is the tradition I came from, before moving towards the center in my adulthood, a very common journey of Americans through their lives. In defense of them, I'll say that the impulse to criticize our own country and our own government's hypocrisies is an honorable one. It's just that the impulse becomes overgrown with some, and becomes reflexive, even an article of faith. That learned and insulated cynicism can become dangerous in a society, and that is why I so much appreciate the efforts of RDI and Kasparov (FRONTLINES OF FREEDOM) to bring dissidents and foreign-born victims of regimes to American schoolchildren to explain, by direct and in-person example, that there is actually plenty to love about this country, and that it is worth defending our fragile democracy. Sometimes it takes an immigrant to really convey to us that there is good cause to be patriotic and civic-minded.