Present dilemmas are not without precedent

By Chuck Freedman

The horrors of 9-11 and global tyrannies have collided with America, our beloved home and the Earth's single superpower. We face daunting new roles as a country.

There are real reasons to be afraid. From the standpoint of threats, our enemies have multiplied and view American citizens as their prime target. These enemies are not geographically identifiable, operate in cells and diabolically turn tools of convenience, such as airplanes, into weapons of destruction.

From the standpoint of our threat to others, we are assuming a role that may be viewed as the protectors of freedom by some or as the builders of a new empire by others. We are feared in each. Many Americans cannot understand why.

All of this is warped by the unnatural speed at which we operate information technologies, barely understanding the high-tech impacts on our own sense of humanity. Chat rooms with people comforted by isolated like-thinking have replaced the real-world labors of the town hall, where

diversity of opinion and the art of compromise had to be reckoned with. "Real news, real fast" has become an entertainment business supplanting Jeffersonian dreams of a fair and balanced free press that should be the north star of democracy.

History tells us a lot about our capacity to create and destroy, if we only listen. Americans have notoriously short attention spans when it comes to the past, perhaps because as a country ours has been so short. There are warning signs that if we do not place our own actions in historical context, America will enter — indeed foster — very dark times.

Historical perspective is especially important right now because politics, both Democratic and Republican versions, may well do us in if left to its own devices. We seem hell-bent on proving true the assertion of Henry Adams that "Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds."

This harsh criticism resonates now as no leader on the national or international scene has the capacity to first look back and then step forward with a comprehensive view of what we must do to advance political freedom and human dignity without blowing ourselves and others up. We long for someone who can paint us a picture with us in it.

What we get from the White House are simplistic stick-figure descriptions of good and evil (we are good, by the way). What we get from the Democrats is worse — carping and second-guessing aimed more at finding a way to take down President Bush than to help us understand our new roles in the world and solve complex problems. For shame. Henry Adams would shudder.

Neither left nor right has a monopoly on wisdom or ignorance here. In contemporary times, the two American presidents with the best connective grasp of history were Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, hardly birds of a feather in most other respects. Indeed, a balanced American world view might be better shaped without political parties, the relevance of which are at best obscure in 2003.

A few historic reminders are in order.

First, the 60-unit counting system which we used to set with precision the timing and longitudinal/latitudinal points of attack on Iraq were developed a couple of thousand years before the birth of Christ by the Sumerians, the ancestors of the very people we are bombing using these points of calculation. Lesson: Dismantling the tyranny of Saddam is one thing, honoring the cradle of civilization is another.

Second, the world is aware that America has a record of imperialism, and Americans should be, too. A lot of good people who had once been persecuted themselves have done a lot bad things in the name of manifest destiny. A short list includes the decimation of

Native Americans, the promotion of slavery and supporting insurrection in Colombia so that we ultimately could force a treaty allowing us to build the Panama Canal.

The latter deed is worth special note, as it evoked California Sen. S. I. Hayakawa's well-known claim about the canal, "We stole it fair and square." Like all countries with power, we have abused control and wrongly taken possession, including the acts leading to the annexation of Hawai'i.

We do not love this country less for acknowledging its misdeeds. To the contrary, the past must be an educator. That we do not fear open discussion of our history is in itself a grace of freedom.

Third, and perhaps most important, our love-hate relationship with Europe is a tale of common bonds and lineage stretched over a large ocean and 500 years with a "snap-boom-bang" cartoon-like elasticity. Lacking consistency, we must build American-European resiliency, never stretching the

relationship to the breaking point. Yes, France's self-interest has clearly driven its anti-American positions in the Middle East. But let's not forget that our own self-interest kept us neutral during World War II until we were attacked at Pearl Harbor.

We all recognize that European fear of America as a power has grown in proportion to the demise of the Soviet Union. This is not merely because America and

Europe had a common political enemy during the Cold War. There is concern that unmitigated might in the hands of one nation is especially susceptible to the pure arrogance of power.

In the Middle Ages, Europe gave birth to the Holy Roman Empire, which united it in distaste for the dominance and opulence of the old Roman Empire. We must ask ourselves: Is Europe building a new Holy Roman Empire, and is America becoming the Roman Empire to the new Europe? We cannot see ourselves in this role, but others do. If the ties that bind America and Europe are stretched to irreparable extremism, we are building the wrong world.

Let's be very careful not to trip over the lowest common denominator of specious TV talk shows and purely partisan politics. For example, the current fixation with finding weapons of mass destruction as a litmus test to justify our invasion of Iraq is misplaced energy. Whatever side you're on, it's an exercise in "gotcha" politics. Our focus going forward should be on what will be done, and by whom, in Iraq and the Middle East to balance interests and build stability. This is very much about the meeting of cultures and history.

If America does not give us national leaders who understand the past and explain the complexities of the future, then fear will be the ultimate victor. We must shine the unfiltered light of history on the future or face the consequences of darkness.