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.Our friend slid back in her seat and hoped forthe best.And fortunately, nothing more happened.The attendants provided oxygento the woman, and the man stood beside her for hours.The pilot went back tothe flight compartment, and hours later the plane landed uneventfully.This is how Americans now travel abroad – alert, suspicious, and fearful.But there’s much more than simple insecurity.There’sr a loss of innocence, and;r a new maturity.Americans are different than we used to be – we’re less secure and increas-ingly assertive; but the world is much the same as it has always been – dan-gerous, self-seeking, and hypocritical.The result is a change in our publicculture, one in which there is less wishful thinking and the illusions whichresult from it are somewhat weakened.Another consequence is a differenttype of engagement of Americans with the world – one that changes thelives of us all, and very much alters the politics of America.GOING WHERE WE DIDN’T SEEK TO GOHow America became the world’s sole superpower and its policeman whilehaving set out to do exactly the opposite, is one of the great ironies ofhistory and would seem to preclude any judgment of American foreignpolicy over most of the twentieth century as any other than a complete andtotal failure.That is, we ended up where we didn’t want to go.Because wegot there in a glorious fashion, winning war after war, it’s hard to believeit was all unintended, but it was.Other countries have engaged in conflictfor preeminence in the rest of the world, into which we’ve been drawn.Ourcountry was never prepared for any major war we entered (the Revolution,the Civil War, World War I or II), and that’s the most convincing evidencefor our lack of design.Having spent two centuries trying to avoid engagement with the geopol-itics of the world, America is now twisting on its heels, making a 180-degreeturn in our intentions, abandoning isolationism and instead accepting ourengagement with the world and to try to make sense of it.This is the greatstory of how America is changing.For many of us the shift is made reluc-tantly, and solely because 9/11 demonstrated so conclusively that we wereboth a target and vulnerable, and therefore that we had to be more aggres-sively engaged abroad with our enemies, lest the conflict be fought out onour own streets and in our own backyards.Similarly, the Japanese attackP1: FCW0521857449c07Printer: cupusbwCUNY475B/Rosefielde0 521 85744 9November 3, 200612:23We’re Different Now119on Pearl Harbor rendered isolation immediately obsolete.So in 1941 theUnited States abandoned trying to hide from the world (isolationism) andsixty years later the United States abandoned passivity in its global engage-ment.It’s been said that the British acquired their empire in a fit of absent-mindedness (meaning that the Crown was otherwise occupied and Britishfinancial adventurers, seeking gain, conquered lands that became theempire); America has no empire, but it has an imperial-like dominancein much of the world today which it has acquired, not by intent, and not,like Britain in a fit of absent-mindedness, but instead while trying to achieveexactly the opposite – to avoid foreign entanglements.In the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, it seems that Ameri-cans may be coming to a more favorable opinion of their nation’s involve-ments abroad – accepting them as a positive necessity, rather than stum-bling into them while seeking to avoid them, as has been our practice inthe past.HOW WE AMERICANS HAVE CHANGEDOn and after 9/11 America played the role of victim.This is a familiar role toEuropeans, and one to which they give much support.American assumptionof the victim’s role was therefore welcomed and encouraged there.We werein fact victims, but whether or not our leaders should have encouraged us inthe role is questionable, and a matter to which we shall return later.Sufficeit to say here that Americans today in their private lives frequently tell theirfamily members and friends not to play the role of victims, even in thecontext of loss, because it is unattractive and usually unavailing, but insteadto recognize a degree of their own blame in what happened, and to moveon with confidence from the loss.Probably this would have been a goodapproach for the nation as a whole immediately after 9/11.But during the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Americatransformed overnight from victim to conqueror, and this much of theworld did not like.Further, our role as Americans was suddenly to supportour military.This was a big shock to many liberals, but most accepted itgracefully.Events are creating a new national character – one forged in terroristattack and preemptive war – both of which are new to our nation.This isthe most important result of September 11 and of the recent war in Iraq,and the changes in ourselves presage major changes in our future and thatof the rest of the world.P1: FCW0521857449c07Printer: cupusbwCUNY475B/Rosefielde0 521 85744 9November 3, 200612:23120American Public Culture and OurselvesPolls show that the trust of the American people in the military is risingstrongly and to high levels.“A poll by the Harvard Institute of Politics, basedon interviews with 1,200 college undergraduates.[taken in April, 2003],found that 75 percent said they trusted the military ‘to do the right thing’either ‘all of the time’ or ‘most of the time.’ In contrast, in 1975, 20 per-cent of people ages 18 to 29 said they had a great deal of confidence in thosewho ran the military, a Harris Poll found
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