What it Means
to Be an American
By Dr Ahmad Faruqui
Dansville, CA
Every July 4th Americans take part in the usual
festivities associated with their independence
from imperialism. There is plenty to choose from,
ranging from early morning pancakes, late morning
parades, afternoon barbeques and late evening
fireworks. At the end of the day, there is even
a chance to reflect on what it means to be an
American.
America was created as a republic that would be
governed by its Constitution, truly a legal marvel.
Incensed at a variety of British edicts, including
the imposition of taxes without representation,
an armed revolt broke out among the 13 Crown colonies
in North America in 1775. On July 4, 1776, John
Hancock, president of the Continental Congress,
officially declared the independence of the colonies
from the Crown. The Declaration of Independence
held the British monarch, King George III, personally
responsible for the problems faced by the United
States.
In the early stages of the ensuing Revolutionary
War, the king questioned his advisors: “Who
is this George Washington?” They assured
him that he was a superseded colonel and no serious
threat. In 1781, Washington accepted the surrender
of Lord Cornwallis in Yorktown, Virginia (later,
Cornwallis twice served as Governor-General in
India and is buried in Ghazipur overlooking the
Ganges River). Following Cornwallis’ surrender,
the British prime minister resigned. His successors,
deciding it was not in Britain’s interest
to continue the war, signed the Treaty of Paris
in 1783, recognized the United States and withdrew
their forces from America.
Today, America is a republic of 50 states with
a population nearing 300 million. It sits like
a colossus on the global stage, with unmatched
economic, political and military power. Its economy
produces a quarter of the world’s output,
its capital markets account for about half of
the world’s wealth and its military expenditure
exceed those of the next 20 nations combined.
Its arch rival, the Soviet Union, is but a distant
memory. While China looms over the horizon, no
nation can hope to rival it any time soon. America
is indeed the Rome of the modern world.
But there is this sordid business of Al Qaeda.
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
the US has been fighting a global war against
the terror network. According to the non-partisan
Congressional Research Service, this war has cost
the American taxpayer a grand total of $500 billion
dollars. No end to this war is in sight. Some
analysts derive comfort from the fact that no
terrorist attacks have since taken place within
the US but, as others are quick to point out,
only one such prior attack had occurred in 1993.
So it is far from certain that the terror network
has been de-fanged.
It is not surprising that the big question on
the minds of all Americans on the July 4th holiday
was whether America was safer from terrorism than
prior to the September 11 attacks. When a thousand
randomly chosen Americans were asked by ABC News/Washington
Post, 59 percent said it was safer. When asked
if the war on terror was going well, 57 percent
answered yes.
These results were at odds with a survey of a
hundred experts on national security and terrorism
by Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for
American Progress. The survey results gave equal
weight to the views of liberals, moderates and
conservatives. Asked whether the US is “wining
the war on terror,” 84 percent said no.
Asked whether the world was becoming “more
dangerous for the United States and the American
people,” 86 percent said yes.
Not surprisingly, 87 percent of the experts traced
much of this new danger to the Iraq war. One of
the experts in the survey was Michael Scheuer,
a former CIA official who headed its now-defunct
bin Laden desk and who describes himself as a
conservative Republican. Scheuer, author of “Imperial
Hubris,” said: “The war in Iraq broke
our back in the war on terror” by providing
global terrorist groups with a recruiting bonanza,
a valuable training ground and a strategic beachhead
near the oilfields of the Gulf.
Regardless of one’s views on the American
invasion of Iraq, it is beyond debate that the
war has created deep divisions within American
society. While overwhelming majorities in the
Congress have rejected draft resolutions calling
for a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq,
and while just about every American supports the
troops, a growing number question whether the
war is winnable and some, such as Congressman
Murtha, want a plan for bringing the troops home.
Critics are openly making the dreaded comparison
with Vietnam and they are no longer the standard
anti-war crowd but retired US generals.
The mistreatment of prisoners at the US facility
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has become increasingly
controversial, since it surfaces troubling issues
about constitutional freedoms and human rights.
The Bush administration’s plan to hold military
tribunals was jolted by a landmark decision by
the US Supreme Court that came out in late June.
By a 5-3 margin, the court ruled that the president
had overstepped his constitutional authority.
One of the justices wrote that trial by military
commission “puts personal liberty in peril
of arbitrary action by officials,” and encroaches
on the separation of powers between the executive,
legislative and judicial branches of government.
This was the second major legal defeat for the
Bush administration. Two years ago, the court
ruled that the president lacked authority to seize
and detain terror suspects and indefinitely deny
them access to courts and lawyers. Back then,
now-retired Justice Sandra Day O’Conner
wrote, “A state of war is not a blank check
for the president.”
Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey, who teaches
international law at the West Point military academy,
noted that “we put ourselves in an un-necessary
legal mess from the beginning, and now we’ve
gotten ourselves in such a mess legally and politically,
there’s no easy solution.”
There is little doubt that America is in an unenviable
position today. Its image abroad is tarnished
by its advancement of a pre-emptive war as a strategic
doctrine and by the practice of this doctrine
in Iraq. Its image on the home front is tarnished
by administration policies that threaten civil
liberties. But history has shown that America
has the institutional resilience to recover from
its woes and there is little reason to think that
the present crisis will be any different. Thinking
Americans, as they saw the fireworks light up
the night sky on the 229th birthday of their nation,
must have said to themselves, “America,
with all thy faults, I love thee still.”
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