A new American tune

About the only thing that I can still remember well of the inaugural concert for President Jimmy Carter in 1977 on Australian television was of a solitary Paul Simon with a guitar in hand, singing somberly his well known song, "American Tune".

I do not quite belong to that generation, but we have always loved Paul Simon for his brilliant song-writing which was arguably at its peak towards the end of his partnership with Art Garfunkel. Many of his songs are intensely personal, articulating a sense of isolation, loneliness, loss or failure for the man in the street in the great American melting pot where the American dream, driven ambition and personal success are worshipped. Through his songs he persuasively makes us spare our thoughts for the common man, for his insecurities, failures and loneliness.

I thought "American Tune" was apt for the occasion, a sober reminder for the incoming President Carter on the evening of his triumphant journey into the White House. After all it was barely two years since the mighty US military had to evacuate from Vietnam in humiliation, and sending ships "that sailed the moon" was gobbling enormous amount of money, that it was time the new president shift some of his concerns towards the common man, something that the Nixon Presidency (Ford's was too brief) had sacrificed in the pursuit of American supremacy in the contest between the two superpowers.

"I don't know a soul who's not been battered, I don't know a friend who feels at ease

I don't know a dream that's not been shattered, or driven to its knees ...

Still when I think of the road we're traveling on, I wonder what's gone wrong"

I never knew what the Carter Presidency did for those people whose sad lives Paul Simon narrates in his songs as his administration did not embark on any major initiatives on the domestic front. But after the madness of the Nixon-Kissinger years - the long bloody intervention Vietnam, the aerial bombardment of Cambodia, and helping Pinochet in a bloody overthrow of a democratically elected government of Chile, President Carter came as a breath of fresh air.

His administration adopted human rights as a foreign policy objective soon after taking office. That was known as the Carter initiative, "human rights is the soul of our foreign policy". The Nobel Peace Prize he won in 2002 was thought to be well deserved, for after retirement, he had worked relentlessly and quietly towards making the world a better place to live.

The Nobel Committee citation explained, "In situation currently marked by threats of the use of power, Carter has stood by the principles that conflicts must as far as possible be resolved through mediation and international cooperation based on international law, respect for human rights and economic development".

He left a greater legacy in retirement than what he could during his lackluster presidency. But perhaps he was more unlucky than he was ineffectual as many perceived him to be. The Iranian Revolution exploded in his face and he later had to deal with the US embassy hostage crisis.

Regardless of his administration's stated foreign policy objective, the workings of other power centres within the entrenched system in pursuing "American interests" ensured that the president did not deviate too far, and American interventionism carried on as usual, or at least this is the charitable view towards the man.

For, it was during his presidency in the late 70's that dictatorships of the murderous Latin American generals supported by the US went on an orgy of kidnappings, torture and killings of dissenters. Closer to home, it was also during his presidency that the Indonesian army invaded East Timor, and the brutal occupation that followed was made possible by US support and arms.

This is indeed one facet of America that has always confounded us, the rest of world. On the one hand, we admire the values of liberty and democracy, and we marvel at the genius of the Founding Fathers for coming out with a document like the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution.

For many oppressed peoples, America's proclaimed desire of helping others taste liberty and democracy offered some kind of hope. The American ethos for individualism, hard work, inventiveness and the entrepreneurial spirit inspired many to emigrate to the land of opportunity to dream the American dream. Through the insidious but powerful influence of the media, popular culture and entertainment, Americans have very successfully projected themselves as heroes that always vanquish the evil forces of this world. For millions of simple people around the world, American lifestyle is to be emulated and her consumer goods desired. But beyond the ephemeral glitter of consumerist paradise, many people have a genuinely deeper appreciation of America.

A generation of Malaysians cherish their memories of living in the US at the prime of youth to study at American universities, and along the way got to learn more about life and to view the world with a broader horizon.

For people in my profession, we are inspired by the stimulating environment of the great American medical institutions, by their hard work, competitiveness and constant quest for progress. But on the other hand, from the Vietnam war onwards when television made news and images reach the average home on the same day that the event happened, we also get to see another image of America, that of a superpower that will not hesitate to unleash its military might on a terrorized civilian population, or prop-up unpopular, brutal dictatorships in the name of "American interests". During the cold war this unsavoury side of America might have found audience only among the world's recalcitrant leftists who could never accept anything good about America. With the triumph of capitalism and the "end of history", the world seemed to have grudgingly forgiven America's excesses as a necessary evil. Even some old leftists today become among those who sing America's praises the loudest.

If our attitude towards America has been one of ambivalence before, deploring the consequences of her interventions in some unlucky place on this earth but finding ourselves unable to live without windows or wean our kids off McDonald's, that seems to be getting less difficult today for many people. Since the war on terror was declared and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq went under way, everyone has become an expert on American dirty wars around the globe, expertly rattling off quotations from Chomsky's books.

Since the war on Iraq, even the Malay dailies have become adept at anti-American posturing, thanks to our former prime minister's outspokenness on this. Yet we know that we cannot live without America. We played along with America's exaggeration of the Islamist threat because detaining Islamists suspected of terrorism links without trial becomes politically convenient, all in the name of fighting terrorism.

For dyed-in-the-wool leftists and people living in unfree societies whose views on America are shaped by grossly biased anti-US propaganda, it is not difficult to form a black and white view of America - the great satan as some of us liked to call her. But for us who have business, professional and friendly links with Americans or simply have benefitted from an American education and learned to enjoy jazz music, it is not so easy to form such a simplistic opinion on this great multi-faceted nation and neither is it necessary to do so.

Living in a vast territory that stretches from Alaska to Guam, enjoying all the material comforts, and always at the cutting edge of scientific progress, it is quite natural for Americans to feel self-sufficient, to think that America is the world. How do we make our American friends comprehend that their government's pursuit of American interests have hurt quite a lot of people, shatter other people's dreams, and that their material well being could very well be at the expense of deepening poverty for some third world societies?

For Muslims this sense of ambivalence is even more acutely felt given the ingrained prejudice against Islam in the west, of which America is a part. This is reinforced by the generally negative if not outright deleterious consequences of American meddling in the affairs of a number of Muslim states, who for its own selfish interests, violate its professed desire of propagating democracy by propping up unpopular, autocratic rulers.

But still, many Muslims, from professionals to labourers dream of migrating to America to escape the harsh realities of their own societies rather than to another Muslim country, for, American society itself is relatively open. After all, religious prejudice and racism is by no means unique to America. At least Muslims there are free to practice and propagate Islam while at the same time be a master of their own destiny.

Despite the first Gulf War, the Iraqi sanctions and the bombing of Sudan, we placated ourselves by arguing that American interventions abroad have not always be unfavourable towards Muslims. American decisiveness led Nato to conduct aerial bombings of Yugoslavia, grudgingly admitted as the only way that ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Kosovo could be arrested, even when purists like Chomsky insisted that this was in contravention of international law. Many of us Muslims felt a sigh of relief that the US showed great moral courage and leadership in our most difficult hour to avert a complete slaughter and expulsion of Muslims from Kosovo, as though trying to redeem the disgraceful conduct of western powers in Bosnia in the mid 90s.

If Muslims were prepared to have some trust in America before, that she could be relied upon to appeal to her conscience and act on moral imperatives, to put its military and political might in the service of good, that seemed to have all but disappeared with President Bush's open-ended "war on terror".

Yes, we bowed our heads in shame for what happened on September 11, but it is increasingly perceived even by a small number of Americans themselves that Bush and the people around him have perversely used that tragedy to embark on a project for the total domination of the world.

Without any sense of guilt, it unleashed its military might indiscriminatingly in Afghanistan and Iraq, such that a large number of those who died were unarmed civilians rather than combattants. Its hardened unilateralist streak as shown by its blatant disregard of international law and the sidelining of the UN when it failed to convince the world why it needed to invade Iraq set a dangerous precedent for a fragile international order that is just beginning to take shape, and unmasked an arrogance that was only matched by its reckless blunders.

Bush might have been able to convince his insular bible belt constituents that Osama Bin Laden conspired with Saddam Hussein to unleash terror on the west. When the world was not buying that, he used the WMD ruse for invading Iraq despite UN weapons inspectors' skepticism.

Bush and the people in the White House took American arrogance to a height hitherto unknown in the pursuit of her imperial ambitions. When one is immensely powerful, one feels that he could afford to be reckless and ignorant, and assumes that others are ignorant too. But this in the end costs America her credibility in the eyes of the world. For many people, it was clear from the start that the invasion of Iraq was all about oil.

At the height of one's power, one often forgets that as truth finds its way to the surface, falsehood becomes increasingly difficult to prop-up. The Spanish people have spoken and it would be interesting to watch what would happen to Bush's allies who ignored their own people on the question of Iraq.

Actually, the Iraqis loved to be rid of Saddam. But had they also got rid of the Al Saud and Al Sabah dynasties, and the Algerian generals as well, giving power back to the people, Arabs and Muslims would have called America their greatest friend and liberator. The vociferous but sound criticisms from many quarters, from the traditional left to Muslim leaders like Dr Mahathir Mohamad of America's dangerous unilateralism and pre-emptive doctrine, and vindicated by the war-on-terror's many blunders, have increased the sophistication of people who previously have no interest in world affairs in grasping America's hypocrisy in the Middle East.

The invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the conduct of the occupation forces towards Iraqi civilians, the treatment of prisoners in Guatanamo Bay, the racist nature of new legislations designed to combat terrorism, have all convinced many Muslims, rightly or wrongly, that the Bush administration is waging a war on them. Why would Muslims think otherwise when the US continue to support Israel militarily and politically, even if the latter under Ariel Sharon has been intensifying its colonial oppression of Palestinians and the destruction of Palestinian society?

Come November, we wonder whether Americans are going to re-elect Bush into the White House or would it be Kerry? Today, nearly 30 years on, as one thinks back of Paul Simon's "American Tune", the battered soul and shattered dreams refer not to ordinary Americans who lose out in the rat race, but rather to other peoples who counted too much on America's power, heroic self-image and rhetoric of liberty and democracy, only to end up deeply disappointed, or simply those unlucky enough to be victims of her interventionist doctrine.