Paying Heed To Niebuhr

TW: We all to some degree more or less buy into the uniqueness of America. In the pursuit of this uniqueness, we have assumed the US is not only capable but ordained to seek to greatly influence societies throughout the world. These efforts have at times been mutually beneficial, at others mutually destructive. Unfortunately we now appear to have embarked on initiatives that are mainly merely ineffective and worse destructive to our well-being, economic and otherwise.

From Greenway at Intl Herald Tribune writing of Andrew Bacevich and Reinhold Niebuhr:
"...Niebuhr warned against "dreams of managing history," a combination of arrogance and narcissism that posed a moral threat. That's why Niebuhr is often held in contempt by neo-conservatives for whom power is everything. Bacevich's concern is that the dream has become a physical threat that could lead to America's inevitable decline.

There is a mythical American narrative, according to Bacevich, that the United States is a nation "providentially set apart in the New World and wanting nothing more than to tend to its own affairs," only grudgingly responding to calls for global leadership "in order to preserve the possibility of freedom."

In reality, the United States has sought expansion, first by pushing west until it reached the sea, then through a brief period of direct colonialism, and more recently through a ruthless if indirect imperial policy of control. It worked spectacularly. The United States became a great power replete with material abundance.
Right around the time of the Vietnam War, Bacevich argues, this began to unravel. Trade imbalances, federal deficits, "mushrooming entitlements, plummeting savings rates, and energy dependence" led us to become a debtor nation, counting on others to foot the bill.
"The positive correlation between expansion, power, abundance, and freedom began to become undone...Further efforts at expansionism have led to the squandering of American power,..."

The net result is that much of the world now looks on the Bush administration's resurrection of Woodrow Wilson's ideals and the expansion of democracy as a cover for coercion and bare-knuckle dominance..."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/21/opinion/edgreenway.php