Reply #11: You left out the Native Americans and Slavery, but you miss the point. [View All]

[Tom Rinaldo]

There are always national myths, and almost always the myths are more noble than the reality. Myths are potent forces and they can be used for good or evil, but they are always ignored at our own risk. Martin Luther King Jr. understood that. He summoned up the best parts from America's myth and he held white Americans accountable to live up to that, but before that he asked them to join with him and take pride in what America was supposed to be about, and to join with him in moving that myth closer to reality.

Clark is using American's desire to see ourselves as moral beings to prod the public, and those who have served in the military in prior wars in particular, toward outrage at having their honor trashed by a public retreat from an American commitment to moral behavior. Of course this nation has frequently fallen woefully short of our professed ideals, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have ideals to use as benchmarks for our behavior. Clark just presented a black and white stark comparison of a shift in stated official American policy away from adhering to the Geneva Conventions toward embracing human rights abuses.

You can say that the best way to deal with that shift, which has in reality resulted in worse human rights abuses under Bush than under other recent Presidents, is to say that America has never had an interest in human rights, but how does that advance a worthwhile cause? MLK was a master at using the positive self image that people who are none the less complicit in oppression have of themselves, to enlist them in the real work of social change.

I'm sorry, but I think it is a GOOD thing to have an American General directly attack this administration for abandoning a commitment to the Geneva Convention and anti torture treaties. I think it is a GOOD thing to define patriotism as an acceptance of international law and adherence to it.