[Peace-discuss] Let’s bring back bipartisan American anti-imperialism

[Robert Naiman]

https://www.facebook.com/robert.naiman/posts/10158599995862656

Let’s bring back bipartisan American anti-imperialism

If I were to assert that women have the same rights as men to walk the
Earth and organize their affairs, nobody here would bat an eye. If I were
to assert that black people have the same rights as white people to walk
the Earth and organize their affairs, nobody here would bat an eye. If I
were to assert that gay people have the same rights as straight people to
walk the Earth and organize their affairs, nobody here would bat an eye.

Surely it follows “trivially,” as we used to say when I studied math, that
people who live in other countries in any purported “U.S. sphere of
influence” have the same rights to walk the Earth and organize their
affairs as people who live in the United States do.

Prior to the Cold War and the McCarthy period – which arguably should be
called the Truman period, because Truman started it - it was a commonplace
bipartisan idea in the United States that people who live in other
countries have the same rights to walk the Earth and organize their affairs
as people who live in the United States do, regardless of any imperial
aspirations of the people who run America. It was a principal domestic
propaganda objective of the Cold War and the McCarthy period to drive this
idea to the margins of American political life, so it wouldn’t interfere
with the imperial aspirations of the people then running the United States.

The movement to end the Vietnam War substantially but far from completely
reduced the political marginalization of this view. As vocal public
opposition to the war grew, it became increasingly commonplace for
Americans to assert not only that the war was too costly to America, not
only that the war involved too many atrocities, but that the war was
fundamentally immoral because a fundamental goal of the war was to prevent
people in Vietnam from enjoying the same rights to walk the Earth and
organize their affairs as Americans in America enjoy.

The high-water mark of the positive impact in Washington of this American
popular reaction to the Cold War and the Vietnam War was the early to
mid-1970s. Congress cut off funding for the Vietnam War, passed the War
Powers Resolution of 1973 to facilitate preventing and ending unauthorized
wars in the future, passed the Arms Export Control Act in 1976 to stop U.S.
weapons from being used to target civilians, investigated and exposed the
atrocities of the CIA in other people’s countries.

Reagan and subsequent presidents pushed with substantial success to reverse
these gains. Now we are engaged in a historic struggle to restore these
gains. Congress has invoked the War Powers Resolution and the Arms Export
Control Act as it never has before, in order to end unconstitutional U.S.
participation in the Saudi war in Yemen.

We’re living through a period where the post-World War II assumptions of
U.S. politics are being tested in both directions – both in the direction
of greater democracy and greater public accountability of government
institutions, and in the direction of less democracy and less public
accountability of government institutions.

In this crucial period of questioning post-World War II assumptions of U.S.
politics, let’s raise the bar for “reforming U.S. foreign policy.” Let’s
assert that people living in countries in any purported “U.S. sphere of
influence” have the same right as Americans living in America to walk the
Earth and organize their affairs.

For now, I’m going to call this idea “the new bipartisan American
anti-imperialism.” If anybody here thinks they have a more felicitous
phrase to describe this idea now, the floor is open.

===

Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1
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