Peace is the Greatest Service of All

We’ve all lived seven years since the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001, and all we have to show for it is an occupation in Iraq, with over 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead and perhaps over a million Iraqis perishing in the turmoil. When we hear Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s words offering up “service” as a panacea, we must always remember the context we are living in—a society that learned the wrong lessons from Sept. 11, and went down a destructive path toward a messianic unilateralism and international disrepute.

The narrative of how the Bush administration squandered the immense goodwill and solidarity of virtually all of the world’s people in the years following the attacks is by now familiar, and there is no need to rehash it here. The wave of resentment spread far beyond the affected regions of the Middle East—on a visit to the poorer regions of the Bolivian city of El Alto, I noticed that a number of public busses sported a mural featuring Osama bin Laden’s smiling visage with a backdrop of the flaming towers. If we want to be considered the world’s “last best hope,” we have a lot of work to do.

Service aims to be a nonideological concept which transcends partisan interest for the common good—in many ways the mirror to the centrist, post-partisan message that both candidates have been running on. It runs in contrast to the established discourse that tells us to strive to be affluent and trust in the unyielding wisdom of the market’s invisible hands. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with seeking to improve the well-being of our countrymen, or having a special identification with our nation-state over all others. But well-meaning volunteerism does not offer redemption from our leaders’ sins, nor does it efface the hatred that their wars have generated.

That would require a response that is by nature ideological and controversial—bold, decisive action to end the occupation of Iraq and the promotion of a peace-driven foreign policy respectful of national self-determination, even in areas of U.S. economic interest. While Obama’s policy prescriptions certainly lean more promisingly toward a partial reconsideration of our global role, neither candidate’s vision of “change” is up to the historic task of constructing a foreign policy that does not rely on war as a means to guarantee a faltering American global dominance.

However, the particular evolution of American patriotism has led to a mandatory discourse for all those aspiring to political leadership that is unparalleled in other countries. Both Obama and McCain have to profess their love of country ad nauseam, and declare that America is the best country on Earth. In essence, we force the idea of an achieved utopia upon ourselves—unlike the rest of the world, we transcend history, the restraints of tradition, and even death itself. Obama is himself a gleaming representation of this vision, constantly proclaiming that his story would not have been possible in any other country in the world while seeking to distance himself from the historical implications of African-American identity. While I support his candidacy, his uncritical reinforcement of our national mythology is not conducive to a reasoned evaluation of our reality.

Consider the writings of prominent conservative writer Dinesh D’Souza. While he represents a particular strand of the neoconservative right, his ideas have broad rhetorical currency within the mainstream political spectrum. “America represents a new way of being human and thus presents a radical challenge to the rest of the world,” he writes. The homo americanus is characterized as being “confident, self-reliant, tolerant, generous, future-oriented—a vast improvement over the wretched, servile, fatalistic, and intolerant human being that traditional societies have always produced.”

The relative comfort of our daily lives has given us the luxury of engaging in post-historical thinking, and leads to a conception of politics not as the vital lifeblood of existence, but as an electoral spectator sport. It has led to a conception of self wildly out of touch with how the world sees us. When the attacks of Sept. 11 violently shook us from this complacency, we responded as we had been taught to respond—with incomprehension. If we are to promote “change we can believe in,” we as a nation cannot continue thinking this way. Otherwise, we will continue to not only carry a big stick but swing it with wanton abandon.

The lines of people donating blood and giving their time and energy during not only the period after Sept. 11 but also after other world tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami are a welcome reminder that our society has not hardened its heart and lost its compassion. As we remember those killed seven years ago, we should heed the good senators’ call to help our fellow man. But as we do so, we must get down from the city on the hill we have defrauded ourselves into believing we inhabit. Otherwise, we become a gated community with guns pointing in every direction, watching fearfully as nefarious evildoers with foreign names like Ahmadinejad and Chavez struggle inexplicably against our self-evident goodness.

Andrew Lyubarsky is a Columbia College senior majoring in Hispanic studies. Cliché Guevara runs alternate Thursdays. Opinion@columbiaspectator.com