The War on Ideologies

I was reading a story in the Dallas Morning New yesterday afternoon titled “Deadly Bombs Challenge Iraqi Leader.” This paragraph below inspired this post:

“Al-Maliki, a Shiite, has based his political fortunes on overseeing the sharp reduction in violence and fostering a sense of national pride among Iraqis who are eager to see the Americans leave.” –from wire reports, DMN 08/20/2009.

From my understanding the Americans entered Iraq to eliminate “weapons of mass destruction”, which were found to never exist, and overthrow the tyrant Saddam Hussein who was the ringleader of a very deadly and corrupt government. The U.S. assisted in starting a new government, a democracy, with Prime Minister Al-Maliki in the forefront.

With this description of good will on our part, why then do the Iraqi citizens want us out of their country?

I think it has something to do with our somewhat intrusive foreign policy dating back to Teddy Roosevelt and his “big stick” (the U.S. Navy) foreign policy.

Teddy’s way to conduct foreign policy was to carry a big stick and speak softly, an African Proverb. In order to exercise this view, he built up the U.S. Navy into the international beast it is today.

“Roosevelt believed that nations, like individuals, should pursue the strenuous life and do their part to maintain peace and order, and he believed that ‘civilized’ nations had a responsibility for stewardship of “barbarous” ones. –The Encyclopedia Britannica online.

His policy set precedents for presidents that followed him. America became this big benevolent bear that stomped into any countries territory in the name of democracy demanding they help…sometimes clumsily.

Any virtue, when taken to extremes, becomes a vice.

What we sometimes don’t take into consideration is that that foreign country has a very acute ideology that is completely different from the one our country was founded on. Those of us who learned how to walk on U.S. soil as babies are soaked to the bone with American ideologies of freedom, equality, opportunity, etc. Ours is based on a separation of church and state, of fractioned religion, of cafeteria Christianity. Capitalism and democracy works great in the U.S. for that reason.

We have a very unique country, and sometimes it might be a mistake when the big benevolent bear bumbles onto another’s soil and waves his “big stick” at their ideologies.