E is for Exceptionalism
Government mandated assassinations can be tricky. Whatever else is to be said, they often reveal a great deal about the leader who claims responsibility for them. Just a few weeks ago, we had the opportunity to look at one such action, and compare it with another. Two images tell the story. On the web, you can find two photographs of a US President witnessing an authorised military assassination from the White House. One is of President Obama when Osama Bin Laden was killed on 2 May 2011. He sits to the side in a small conference room crowded with observers, as Air Force Brigadier General Brad Webb, sitting at the table monitoring the raid, keeps in touch with Admiral William McRaven, the Joint Special Operations commander in Afghanistan. This was a military operation. In contrast, President Trump was in charge when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed on 26 October 2019. In the John F Kennedy Conference Room Trump sits at the head of the table, with military men to one side, Pence and others on the other. He radiates authority as the ‘commander in chief’. This was about the President.
Not just visuals, the comments of the two could not have been more different. After giving some details of the background to the exercise, Obama summarised the actual attack: “Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.” [i]
Trump was far more fulsome: “U.S. Special Operations Forces executed a dangerous and daring nighttime raid in northwestern Syria and accomplished their mission in grand style. The U.S. personnel were incredible. I got to watch much of it. No personnel were lost in the operation, while a large number of Baghdadi’s fighters and companions were killed with him. He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way. The compound had been cleared by this time, with people either surrendering or being shot and killed. Eleven young children were moved out of the house and are uninjured. The only ones remaining were Baghdadi in the tunnel, and he had dragged three of his young children with him. They were led to certain death. He reached the end of the tunnel, as our dogs chased him down. He ignited his vest, killing himself and the three children. His body was mutilated by the blast. The tunnel had caved in on it, in addition. But test results gave certain immediate and totally positive identification. It was him. The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him.” [ii]
Clear enough? If you turn to videos and watch both men reporting, the contrast is even greater. Obama’s announcement is low key, almost apologetic. Alone, he walks away after his statement without delight or pride; what had to be done was done. Trump was imperious when he spoke. It was a triumph, he explained, lauding those involved, while omitting to mention the key role played by intelligence from the Kurds, (among others), the very people he had abandoned the week before. I guess it is too much for me to understand Trump’s approach, as I am unable to grasp what his unmatched brilliance can encompass. It’s all covfefe to him, after all.
However, while tempted to spend more time on the absurd behaviour of self-centred Trump, (who was unable to see what was happening as the killing took place, with only live audio being transmitted to the conference room), I want to ask a question that sits behind both these events. What does it mean when it is said these actions were justified by ‘American exceptionalism’?
American exceptionalism is claimed to arise from three inter-related ideas. The first is that the history of the United States makes it inherently different from other nations, a country becoming, after the American Revolution, “the first new nation” based on the principles of liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, democracy and free market capitalism. Second is the belief the US has a unique purpose, which is to transform the world, captured by Abraham Lincoln’s address in claiming America had a duty to ensure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”, and to do this for every other country. Finally, these two elements combine to create the belief that “the United States’ history and mission give it a superiority over other nations”: this is the final justification of American exceptionalism. [iii]
It is the second point that is the most consequential. In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln stated America was a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” and that America was inextricably connected with freedom and equality. Claiming a fundamental responsibility, he went on to assert the country’s mission was to ensure that America’s approach to government should prevail. “It has since been argued that Lincoln believed the United States would create a society that would be the best and the happiest in the world, the supreme demonstration of democracy in practice. However, the Union did not exist just to make men free in America. It had an even greater mission — to make them free everywhere. By the mere force of its example, America would bring democracy to an undemocratic world.” [iv]
How has this worked in practice? One observer captured the US view well, observing “the most important respect in which the United States has been genuinely exceptional, about international affairs, international law, and promotion of human rights: namely, in its outstanding global leadership and activism.” He went on to state “To this day, the United States remains the only superpower capable, and at times willing, to commit real resources and make real sacrifices to build, sustain, and drive an international system committed to international law, democracy, and the promotion of human rights. Experience teaches that when the United States leads on human rights, from Nuremberg to Kosovo, other countries follow.” [v] It is a view many share.
When interviewed in Strasbourg in April 2009, President Obama commented “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism,” adding, “I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we create partnerships because we can’t solve these problems alone” [vi]
Unsurprisingly, he was attacked by Republicans. Mitt Romney argued it showed Obama did not believe in American exceptionalism, and former governor Mike Huckabee suggested Obama’s “worldview is dramatically different from any president, Republican or Democrat, we’ve had … He grew up more as a globalist than an American. To deny American exceptionalism is in essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation” [vii]. However, in a speech on the Syria Crisis at the time, on September 10, 2013, Obama said: “however, when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death, and thereby make our kids safer over the long run, I believe we should act … That is what makes America different. That is what makes us exceptional.” [viii] Was he being careful with his words: exceptional but not exceptionalism?
Carefully chosen or not, his remarks drew a response from Putin, in an opinion piece in The New York Times, the next day. He commented “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation… We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.” Putin’s views were soon endorsed by Donald Trump who declared Putin’s op-ed “a masterpiece … You think of the term [exceptional] as being beautiful, but all of sudden you say, what if you’re in Germany or Japan or any one of 100 different countries? You are not going to like that term … It is very insulting, and Putin put it to him about that.” [ix] As usual, Trump has continued to confuse everyone. He has claimed he has redefined American exceptionalism by bringing an end to the neoliberal or neoconservative globalist project that many Republicans support, but he has also advocated an ‘America First’ policy, emphasising unilateralism, but only sometimes non-interventionism.
Well, to read that Trump has agreed with arguments both for and against exceptionalism is no surprise. Not should we be amazed by Putin’s response: well, perhaps a little surprised that he relied on religion to make his point!
Is the US exceptional? Like Australia, it was a country created by pioneers, establishing colonies in a land not yet recognised as a state. Both considered the existing inhabitants had no claim on territory, and could be safely swept aside, and it took centuries before their rights were given some acknowledgement. Both made use of slave labour, from Africa to the US (and to other North and South American colonies), and from New Caledonia to Australia (along with other Melanesians, the Kanaks were also taken to California, Canada, India, South Africa, and Malaysia). Australia also used its indigenous peoples as slaves. Long before Australia, the US was an independent democratic republic, free from control the British crown’s control. It is an odd quirk of history that a country created and developed with slavery, on land expropriated from the indigenous people, should end up an exemplar of a “new nation” touting the principles of liberty, egalitarianism, and democracy. It is another strange quirk that Australia can’t quite throw off its link to the British crown: perhaps it needs a war of independence, too!
US history is not so ‘exceptional’. However, Abraham Lincoln did offer the US a mandate. To quote again from his memorable 1863 Gettysburg address, he said: “[O]ur fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” He ended: “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Of course, you might care to recall this was fifteen years after Marx and Engels had proposed a similar claim for government by the people . In their 1848 Communist Manifesto, they set out an alternative agenda for liberty and equality: “the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.”
Two very different approaches, both claiming to benefit (almost) everyone through ‘democracy’. One has relied on the benefits of capitalism and the free market, the other on government and a managed economy. Inevitably, those claims back in the 19th Century were destined to come into conflict. And this links us to that third claim to exceptionalism that the US asserts: American history includes the ‘defeat’ of communism with the end of the Cold War, pushing Mikhail Gorbachev to make economic reforms, with the doctrine of perestroika. A win for American democracy? 150 years later, we know that neither approach is ideal. America exceptionalism is asserted as the basis for it to defend democracy and sustain free market capitalism. But free market capitalism leads to oligarchy and exploitation of the many by the few. Communist countries quickly slip into dictatorships, their principles abandoned. Was communism defeated by free market capitalism? No, ideas aren’t defeated; they linger on, whatever happens.
America triumphant; isn’t that how other countries like to see themselves? In 1930, Sellar and Yeatman published a slim volume, 1066 and All That, ‘the book that takes history apart, and leaves it like that’. To make things clear, it has an extensive subtitle: “A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings, and 2 Genuine Dates”! I loved it as a child, and still laugh out loud when I read it. Here they are on King Alfred’s life “Alfred had a very interesting wife called Lady Windermere (The Lady of the Lake), who was always getting clothed in the same white frock, and used to go bathing with Sir Launcelot (also of the Lake) and was thus a bad queen.” Quite apart from anything else, all Englishmen know bathing is a bad thing. I know, I know, you have to read it to enjoy it.
What has 1066 and All That to do with exceptionalism? It reveals that an ‘exceptional’ country can also laugh at itself, gently, sending up its strengths and its foibles. I think Barack Obama would both enjoy and understand this ‘slim volume’ if he hasn’t yet read it. If Donald Trump were to read it (although I understand he doesn’t read books), he simply wouldn’t get it at all. It reveals the gulf between them: for Obama, a claim to exceptionalism is balanced with humility; Trump sees himself and the US as exceptional; alas, in him what we see is an exceptional fool.
[i] http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/02/bin.laden.announcement/index.html
[ii] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-death-isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi/
[iii] And a reason to export bad practice: e.g. medical charges https://grattan.edu.au/report/saving-private-health-1/?
[iv] Williams, T. Harry (June 1953). “Abraham Lincoln – Principle and Pragmatism in Politics: A Review Article”. Mississippi Valley Historical Review. Vol. 40 (1): page 97
[v] Harold Hongju Koh, “On American Exceptionalism” 55 Stan. L. Rev. 1479 (2003) quote at p. 1487
[vi] Michael Sheer “On European Trip, President Tries to Set a New Pragmatic Tone” Washington Post, April 5, 2009
[vii] Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith, “The New Battle: What It Means to be American,” Politico, August 20, 2010
[viii] Karen Tumulty, “American exceptionalism, explained”, The Washington Post, September 12, 2013
[ix] James Kirchik, “Beware the Hillary Clinton-Loathing, Donald Trump-Loving Useful Idiots of the Left, The Daily Beast, 15 August 2016
