The Myth of American Selflessness

An excllent observation from Alex Massie (jumping off this from Daniel Larison):

Actually, I’d go further. One of the odder elements of American thinking is the widespread belief that the United States never fights wars for itself, only on behalf of others. Iraq is a war fought “on behalf of” muslims and so, we are now told, is Afghanistan. Bosnia and Kosovo were wars “for” the “muslims” and the Kosovars and nothing to do with the need to find something for NATO to do or thrill an American president denied his place in history by the absence of any great conflict. Before that, there were the small wars to “save” Grenada and Panama. Before that still, to hear some people talk, you’d think that the American presence in Vietnam was only about “saving” the South Vietnamese.

The greatest example of that has to be America’s bizarre self-congratulatory narrative about World War II. It’s a narrative that’s all the more bizarre for the fact that the truth would still reflect well on us. But somehow the fact that the Soviet Union did more, objectively, to beat Hitler gets excised. As does the fact that it was Canada, Australia, and New Zealand rather than the United States that really did somewhat selflessly jump to throw in with the Allies at the earliest possible date. Somehow we’re supposed to believe that the United States single-handedly, and in a completely disinterested manner, rode to the rescue and that it was incredibly cowardly of the nation of France to located itself adjacent to Germany rather than having the foresight to be courageously separated from Hitler by the Atlantic Ocean.

Not that there was anything terrible about our conduct during that period. On the contrary, we acquitted ourselves well. But that’s all the more reason that there’s no need to build this absurd and overblown narrative around it.

Meanwhile in the present day you get this pervasive sense that we’re embarked upon our imperial project for the sake of everyone else. So instead of responding rationally to the fact that other people don’t like it and it’s costing us a ton in blood and treasure, we get bitter and defensive about the fact that other people don’t like it. But there’s no reason we should expect them to like it, or that we should refuse to see the world for what it is and think seriously about whether or not this extremely forward-leaning posture is really helping us or anyone else.