An American Apologist Abroad

The family matriarch shifted in her seat, visibly bothered. "What I can't understand," the 73-year old Italian native and resident asked the few Americans at the table, "is why all of your countrymen were so supportive of the U.S. bombing of Libya?"

And in Hong Kong the sentiment, although not the issue, was very similar. A 53-year-old textile factory owner asked increduously, why do Americans seek to retaliate against the Hong Kong textile industry for its trade deficit?

During a nine month stint overseas, I was constantly placed in the position of having to defend America's foreign policy. The critics were not the usual anti-U.S. protagonists. Rather, they were generally self-described supporters of the U.S. The criticism was aimed not at such traditionally deplorable foreign policy targets as U.S. intervention in Nicaragua. Instead, people were dismayed with America's way of responding to universally agreed upon trouble areas, like terrorism and international trade.

Countless times I found myself on the defensive. Critical Asians, Australians and Europeans complained to me as if I were the White House. I was thrust into the unfamiliar role of defending U.S. foreign policy, while in America I would be among those criticizing it.

Critics seem puzzled by many Americans' desire to dramatically retaliate against countries the U.S. perceives as a threat to its citizens, such as Libya for supporting terrorism and several Southeast Asian nations, including Hong Kong, for the U.S. trade deficit. But foreign observers are confused by America's insistence on seeing these issues in terms of black-and-white. Are Americans unable to comprehend the complexity of issues, they asked. Or can they only register anecdotes, just the way David Stockman describes President Reagan's power of understanding?

"You must understand," I would begin, "that U.S. citizens are frustrated that..." I would then fill in the blanks, either about murdered Americans or unemployed factory workers. They were little convinced by my explanations.

It did not take long for me to see how flawed the "frustration" argument is. A more complete answer is much more self-critical, based largely on the American psyche. Other nations, after all, share similar frustrations. But they don't respond the way we do. We Americans favor and justify retaliation because we see things in terms of the good-guys and the bad-guys. And, not surprisingly, the U.S. is almost always the good-guys in this neat formula.

It's extremely difficult to peg exactly why we separate many foreign policy issues into good and evil. One obvious reason is that it makes it easier to swallow complex concepts. But are Americans inherently more stupid than the rest of the world? Not likely.

Some blame Reagan for this phenomenon. However, Reagan is just skillful at capitalizing upon it. His manipulation of the American public into supporting the highly immoral bombing of Libya is an excellent example of this. In contrast, he has had to fight against this phenomenon on the issue of international trade. The President largely opposes popular sentiment for strict protectionist measures against many of our trading partners.

Perhaps isolation caused by strength and location allows us to be the way we are. We are so powerful that we can get away with hurting innocent people, because the repercussions will be minimal. Our location distances us from the victims. We do not see what happens to them, and honestly, few Americans care. And, as in the case of Italy with Libya, we are often times not the country that will most likely receive the consequences of our action.

Our retaliatory acts are not as "surgical" as we would like to believe. We strike out at the baddies, but often hit the innocent. When good-and-bad ideological divisions are translated into actions, our friends overseas are right to fear, and maybe Americans should too.