I’ve just spent seven weeks in the United States and encountered hundreds of students, professors and other ordinary citizens all around the country who share a set of powerful ideas–personal liberty, pluralism, and equal rights and opportunities guaranteed by the rule of law. Yet America also runs into great difficulties when it takes its ideals around the world on the back of its army trucks and air force planes. Consequently, American society is tempered today by some humility, anchored in genuine perplexity. The militant arrogance and aggressive self-assuredness that often defined American public and foreign policy in recent years have given way in places to a more humble spirit of inquiry. Everywhere I went, Americans asked the same questions: Why does the world resist American attempts to promote democracy? Why do so many people all over the world criticize the US? Why is the American “noble mission in Iraq going so badly? Based at Stanford University in northern California, then at Northeastern University in Boston, I traveled throughout the land and heard citizens everywhere ask honest questions about how the US should best behave in the world. I encountered only the rare wild accusations about Arabs and Muslims or equally jingoistic assertion that “America knows best. If the world changed for Americans after 9/11, it seems to be changing again these days, and for the better. Typical were the questions I had from a class of over 300 students at Northeastern University on globalization and international affairs – itself a sign of the growing interest here in learning about the world, rather than sending the troops abroad to rearrange it. A few energized students slammed me as a “raving fanatic and asked how I dared to deliver my “ideologically skewed views in a society with freedom of thought, and I thanked them for their candor and for keeping me on my toes. Most students, however, actually engaged on the issues of the US in the world, asking thoughtful questions: Did I think the Arabs were guilty of the same sort of hypocrisy of which I accused the US? (Yes, in most cases). How can Arabs and Americans better understand each other if their mass media do a poor job of accurately portraying the other side? (Demand better media as consumers, and seek out people from the other side to meet and talk to.) If Israel acceded to Arab demands on a peaceful settlement, would this be taken as a sign of weakness, and thus exploited? (Not if a peace agreement were anchored in the rule of law, applied to both sides equally, and cemented with strong security guarantees for all.) Is the US using terror-like tactics in the Middle East by violently coercing the Iraqis to form a democracy? (Probably more intellectual than physical terror, in most cases.) What is the best course of action for the US to bring order to Iraq now? (Start withdrawing slowly, and let the Iraqis define their governance system and power-sharing consensus, so that their own legitimate government can stop the violence that plagues them.) How can Israel talk to “terrorists like Hamas? (Calmly, over a cup of coffee at the Notre Dame center in Jerusalem, in order to implement a truce and move both societies towards coexistence in this generation, and full peace in the next.) Two brief encounters with elderly and young Americans during my trip clarified my appreciation for America’s basic strengths. One was a conversation on an airplane trip with a semi-retired, elderly judge on the circuit court of appeals in North Dakota, who has been on the bench since the 1960s. I asked him how the rule of law had evolved in his lifetime, and what he most admired about his work. He replied that judicial appointments had become more politicized, and that the legal system worked best when judges of all political persuasions worked together to interpret the law honestly and fairly. Politics often tips the system one way or the other, he said, but it always rights itself through the self-correcting democratic engagement of ordinary citizens. He added that impartial judges were there to make sure this happened. The second encounter was with a student-soldier at a university in Boston, an earnest young man who was on leave from the armed forces to pursue his degree. He was clearly grappling with many political and ideological issues related to the use of the US military abroad. He cut through the haze, though, with his assertion that he and his fellow soldiers focused always on the basic mission that defined their work and life. As he put it: We serve to defend the Constitution of the United States, he said, not the particular ideology of any political leaders who come and go in Washington. The judge, I thought, would have been pleased to know that his Constitution was in good hands, transmitted to a new generation of young and spirited Americans.
Rami G. Khouri writes a regular commentary for THE DAILY STAR.
