Why We (Until Recently Didn't) Actually Suck

I might suck, because I've taken such a long break from posting to my blog, but Glenn Greenwald does not...and he explains with great passion and poignancy why the United States hasn't sucked, in relative historical terms, until now with the Bush II years:

Much of the world's geopolitics for the last half of the 20th Century was driven by the conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and people around the world were affected by that conflict in countless ways. They were well aware of what the U.S. was doing in the world. The news about the America's conduct may not have been transmitted as immediately as it is now, but it was well known.

Yet despite all of that, much of the world -- majorities in nations around the world -- respected and admired this country and the values it symbolized. That isn't because they were duped into thinking that America was inerrantly Pure Good or because our bad conduct was concealed. Outside of right-wing followers who stupidly equate criticism of the U.S. with hatred for it (even though the opposite is usually true), nobody thought that the U.S. was angelic. No nation or any other group of human beings is.

They maintained favorable views of the U.S. not because they were unaware of its failings, but rather, because the good that the U.S. did in the world outweighed its bad. It is misleadingly one-sided to point to Vietnam or Central American covert wars without simultaneously acknowledging America's role in the defeat of the Nazis, or its opposition to the truly oppressive Communist empire (which suffocated the lives of hundreds of millions of people), and -- I think most importantly -- the political principles and individual liberties embodied by our Constitution and the stable democracy it has secured. World opinion prior to the Bush presidency was so favorable not because people were unaware of America's flaws, but because they were so well-aware of its virtues.

[snip]

So much of the intensity and anger driving the criticisms of the Bush presidency -- certainly my own, and much of what I read (as exemplified above) -- is grounded in a fervent belief in American political values, its political principles and its constitutional framework. The anger comes not from a belief that the U.S. is an evil and corrupt entity, but from the opposite view. It comes from witnessing the all-out assault on these vaunted political principles and values and the complete corruption, close to the destruction, of our country's national character that has made the U.S. such an important and admired presence in the world for so long.

Complete, total agreement. None of this excuses past abhorrent behavior on behalf of American administrations, but I'm not convinced that any other country, in a similar global geo-political position, would do any better. Perhaps for a time...but power corrupts, and it is notable that, until now, America's net contribution to the world had been considered a positive.

We're a bad trip...and that truly sucks.