Fighting for America

Posted on September 30, 2002 in Citizenship North Carolina

Once, when I was sitting around a bar table with a couple of other graduate students, a drunk and disheveled Vietnam vet accosted our fur-faced clowder: “Have you ever fought for your country?”

Steve, the bare-butt faced, all-American boy, chuckled and echoed the taunt back at the troubled derelict. “Have you ever fought for your country? he says. Have you ever fought for your country?” John, fresh home from Africa, gaped, and muttered “What the fuck?” And I answered the man: “Every day. Every day of my life.”

Andrea See the Serial Deviant shared the retort of Indian writer and intellectual Arundhati Roy who has been called “anti-American” for her criticisms of the war on terrorism:

What does the term mean? That you’re anti-jazz? Or that you’re opposed to free speech? That you don’t delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean you don’t admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?

This sly conflation of America’s music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the US government’s foreign policy is a deliberate and extremely effective strategy. It’s like a retreating army taking cover in a heavily populated city, hoping that the prospect of hitting civilian targets will deter enemy fire.

I do not think Ms. Roy hates America any more than my mother does. Over brunch at Marie Callenders, she told us that her card group tried to make her feel like a traitor for criticizing the Resident. She quoted Benjarmin Franklin to them: “Those who give up freedom in order to have security end up having neither.” “That was then,” they explained. “This is now.” They had no retort for the second quote: “It is the sacred duty of every American to criticize the president.” (Theodore Roosevelt).

The reasoning of the day seems to be: “Be glad that you live in a free country where you can say nice things about the president and not be arrested for it.” People who had no problem defaming Clinton and causing his daughter Chelsea anguish with tales of her father’s peccadillos now upbraid any who suggests that George W. Bush is less than ethical. I counter-suggest that these — by not questioning, by not examining, by not giving thought to the questions raised by this administration’s evisceration of the Bill of Rights — betray the country.

If you want to find the anti-Americans, look for them among those who would allow a few to profit from the many, who loot the public coffers, who would sell off our natural heritage, who would freely lie about their motives, and who deny the average citizen freedom from the triple fears: from want, from sickness, and from violence. These occupy leather chairs in boardrooms. Their lackies sit around card tables, calling everything George W. Bush does “good” and “above reproach”.