Peter Shr - Week 6 - American War
The USA has evolved from fighting a war for survival to engaging in proxy wars. One thing that has remained constant is the USA's active portrayal of its motivation as righteous. The USA does not have a clean history with war, but I think its powerful military, focus on ideology, and victories somehow manage to justify its participation in the perception of many.
The Revolutionary War stemmed from British taxation on American colonies and Parliament’s refusal to acknowledge the colonists' pleas. Through 1775-1783 and thousands of casualties, the American colonies defeated a tyrannical empire and gained independence. Textbooks portray Americans as fighting for the purest ideals of freedom and the new constitution of equality. I think that this war gave birth to the USA's strong self-perception of morality, leading to a sense of superiority over other countries engaging in wars for “lesser” causes.
President James Knox Polk sought to expand westward, but he did not want to portray the US as the aggressor. Instead, he set troops in disputed zones to have Mexican troops attack them, allowing Polk to start the Mexican-American War in 1846 against Mexico in a seemingly more noble cause of self-defense. The US took modern-day Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, and California from Mexico. The USA even considered annexing all of Mexico since it had the military capability to, but the USA did not want to bring so many non-white people into their country.
In the next century, World War I destroyed millions of lives as a result of hardening alliances and rising tensions in Europe. French, British, and German forces engaged in trench warfare, while Russians fought against Axis powers on the Eastern Front. Millions died for nearly three years before the US joined in response to German submarine attacks on US ships. After the war ended, Woodrow Wilson established the Fourteen Points, attempting to portray the war as a triumph of self-determination over absolutism. Painting the war as black and white when the conflicts stemmed from a long history of European competition and territorial disputes displays America’s tendency to make itself and its fellow victors righteous.
I think the worst examples of the USA using its moral high ground to justify war are seen in the Cold War. Fueled by the fear of communism, the US sought to prevent all Soviet influences and engage in proxy wars. While local countries, like Vietnam, were concerned with gaining independence from European colonization, the USA’s concern of morality wasted millions of lives and harmed international relationships. In addition, I think another reason the Vietnam War is so negatively portrayed is the fact that the USA lost, strengthening the sense that the war was all a waste.
There are a lot of wars I did not talk about, and some could argue that other nations have committed more serious offenses. That may be true, but I feel that the USA’s belief in its moral superiority is unjustified.
Hi Peter! I appreciate how this blog post took the time to break down America’s history in a way that counters the evident bias found in the US history textbooks we learn from at school. Honestly, the biased US history textbooks are likely a result of the US’s tendency to make itself appear righteous; after all, it is the government which is responsible for organizing public education. However, it should not be held against the US government that they try to portray America as righteous, since almost every country in the world tries to appear moral so that they maintain respect from their citizens. On another note, this blog post is highly structured and organized, which adds to your argument that the US wrongly portrays itself as righteous—each paragraph examines a specific war the US fought and handled poorly. One thing that you could add to this blog, however, is to acknowledge that you are looking at these wars in retrospect while US leaders at those times did not have the same level of awareness about the country’s future. By acknowledging this, you would make this blog post a less biased and more credible argument regarding America’s morality.
ReplyDeleteHi Peter! As always, your blog is well-written and interesting. I like your blog topic: proxy wars. I feel like proxy wars are a topic that isn't covered too much. To be honest, I find it rather disturbing how the US tries to instigate wars in foreign countries to benefit itself while placing itself in the moral high ground and claiming some sort of victimhood. I also like how you talked about textbooks that were biased toward America. Although I understand why a government would find some sort of benefit in creating textbooks that portray the government in a more positive way, I personally condemn such actions. I feel like students deserve to have an unbiased education, and that if subjected to altered history, history will be doomed to repeat itself. Overall, I like the structure and writing style that you have in your blogs: each one is eloquently and smoothly written, and you smoothly transition from one war to another. In addition, your description of specific wars and presidents shows your knowledge of the topic and the effort that you put into writing the blog. The only small problem that I have is your conclusion, which comes across as somewhat anti-climatic in comparison to your body paragraphs, which are excellently written.
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