The other day I watched a news report on the annual CPAC convention in Washington DC. None other than Donald Rumsfeld - the architect of the failed Iraq War and Abu Ghraib - was being awarded the Medal of Freedom and the crowd chanted "USA, USA"! It is an axiom among American conservatives that the US is exceptional - God's chosen country, Ronald Reagan's "Shining City on the Hill", a force of Great Good in the world even when - especially when - it uses military force to achieve its aims. President Obama is hated by this crowd for not emphasizing "American Exceptionalism" enough in his speeches.
I am rereading Stefan Zweig's Die Welt von Gestern - his long, melancholy suicide note. Zweig writes about the Europe he loved - especially the city of Vienna, which, for a brief period, was the center of world culture. This Europe was suddenly destroyed forever in a spasm of nationalist frenzy in 1914:
Wenn man heute ruhig überlegend sich fragt, warum Europa 1914 in den Kreg ging, findet man keinen einzigen Grund vernünftiger Art und nicht einmal enen Anlass. Es ging um keine Ideen, es ging kaum um die kleinen Grenzbezirke; ich weiss es nicht anders zu erklären als mit diesem Überschuss an Kraft, als tragische Folge jenes inneren Dynamismus, der sich in diesen vierzig Jahren Frieden aufgehäuft hatte und sich gewaltsam entladen wollte. Jeder Staat hatte plötzlich das Gefühl, stark zu sein und vergass, dass der andere genauso empfand, jeder wollte noch mehr and jeder etwas von dem andern.
(Today, when we think about why Europe went to war in 1914 it is impossible to come up a single rational reason, nor even a cause. It wasn't about ideas, nor did it really have to do with the tiny border sectors. I can only explain it as the consequence of an excess of energy, an inner dynamic that that built up during 40 years of peace and then was suddenly and violently unleashed. Every state suddenly had a need to feel strong and forgot that the other felt the same way, each wanted more and each wanted something from the other.)
But the horrors of the Great War were not enough to extinguish the fires of nationalism. In his Diary of a Man in Despair the writer Reck-Malleczewen in 1940 sees nationalism consuming itself in total war. It is amazing that at this early date an arch-conservative like Reck-Malleczewen could envision the European Union:
"Nationalism, no matter how loudly defended today, is almost finished, and the coup de grace will come in the most moblike of all wars. Tomorrow it will be behind us, an ugly, sweaty dream. The idea of a united Europe was not always upheld by me, but I know now that we can no longer afford the luxury of considering it a mere idea. Europe must either make any further wars impossible, or this cradle of great ideas will see its cathedrals pulverized, and its landscape turned into a plain. "
Today, the "ugly, sweaty dream" of nationalism is cherished by the Republican Party in the US and its white nationalist partners in the Tea Party movement.
It is grossly inappropriate to compare the Iraq War and Abu Ghraib with WW I, II or the death camps, even obliquely like you have here. You know better, and you should be ashamed.
Posted by: John in Michigan, USA | March 04, 2011 at 10:08 PM
de ce nu:)
Posted by: nualrybub | March 06, 2011 at 05:22 PM
de ce nu = why not?
Well to start, the recent events had 100's of thousands of deaths, while the older events had 100's of millions of deaths.
Rude but mostly peaceful protests in a democracy, in which those who break the rules have a high chance of punishment, have nothing in common with routine, state-sanctioned routine use of mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Apples are very different than small, orange-painted rocks, even though they are both made of atoms.
Also, have you heard of Godwin's Law? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_Law
Posted by: John in Michigan, USA | March 06, 2011 at 07:49 PM