I love the French. I find it impossible not to, and I do so deeply. But I am reminded of something a Frenchman once told me of foreign policy and American-French differences: the French do not fight for other people. I defended then, as I do now, that America does fight for other people. It is one of the saving graces of our nation and its mentality, and it is a moving notion that represents the best of what is quintessentially American.

To be sure, America also has its self-interest. Even in World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had economic and politically galvanizing interests as well as helping England, France, and the world. But, beyond self-interests, Americans respond to this sort of idealism, a fact that speaks well for their souls. We all, even those born long after, remember that war and remember proudly America’s sacrifice, paid in money, social disruption, and the blood of our men on foreign soil. We did not do enough to stop genocide even then, conspiring to hide the facts from the world and not incorporating enough humanitarianism into our military strategy. But there can be no doubt that Europe is thriving today, to the betterment of her many venerable cultures, in large part because of our actions.

I recall a German who once told me that each time criticism of America and its policies, many of whom I also disagree with, enters a conversation, someone eventually trumps everything by saying what everyone well remembers: that America was about the best conqueror you could ask for. Throughout history, wars in foreign lands were followed by colonization and annexation. It is a great humorous cliché in America, a cliché born out best by Germany and Japan, that the best thing that can happen to a nation is for it to fight a war with America. If a society can be judged by its treatment of its poorest members, a society surely can be judged by its treatment of those whom it has defeated in war.

Around the world, from Latin Americans to Arabs, people know of America’s dubious policies. We are the undisputed champion of the world, both economically and militarily, also in terms of opportunity if not also in civil rights. Immigrant group after immigrant group has come to America, struggled to eke out a living, and done better than they did at home. Anyone who has spoken to foreigners extensively must recognize two things: that the world is aware of America’s many dubious policies, but that many of the poorest people who have ostensibly been victims of American foreign policy praise that policy and America on the whole.

America likely executed Panamanian civilians in the streets during our almost unprovoked invasion of that nation under George H. W. Bush. An almost total media shut-out occurred during that war, preventing any Vietnam-like depictions of American brutality. Responsible estimates of the number of civilians killed range widely, but are certainly in the thousands. And there can be no defense for such behavior. Yet ask a Panamanian, ask a Latin American. When you live in a nation under a brutal dictator like Noreiga, when thousands are killed by your own government, even a sloppy U.S. invasion is, in point of fact, a liberating force.

Americans love to criticize ourselves. We have a unique capacity to condemn and interrogate our own past. From slavery to Japanese internment, from tarring and feathering Loyalists during our revolution itself to our undermining of elected governments or support of unpopular dictators in our own believed interests, there is much to criticize. But at times this criticism becomes a form of didacticism, obscuring and occluding the fact of America’s positive influence. Our own sympathy for poor people of the world, unfortunately not universal among our population, often causes us to rewrite our history.

While the right too often looks insensitively to American self-interest, the cries of dying civilians under our bombs falling on deaf ears, the left too often looks to American mistakes and horrors, the cries of the starving world dying of easily-cured diseases and living in fear of crime and ultimately of their own incompetent or savage governments equally fall on deaf ears.

We must learn from the errors of the past, but not flinch from intervention in the future. We cannot stand behind isolationism or behind relativism while people eat grass out of hunger or are slaughtered by genocidal policies or oppressive dictators. Let us demarcate cultural differences, such as veiling, from universals, such as the right not to be gassed or tortured for little reason, and resist the urge to equivocate. The problem is not gender relations in Afghanistan, but that its people are starving, lacking an educational system, and fearful of thugs in the streets. The problem is not Iraq’s denunciations of America, but that its people are being threatened and tortured and killed -- a situation not improved by sanctions.

When we invade, we must do so with a commitment to limiting civilian casualties, even at the cost of some American lives. Air campaigns, cruise missiles, and distant strikes from tanks all minimize U.S. casualties while leaving men, women, and children dead and crippled. While America’s now stereotypical stronger reaction to a single dead American than a thousand dead foreigners, or a hundred dead Englishmen or French or Germans or Canadians, remains deplorable, it is not unreasonable for a nation doing a good act for a people to attempt to protect itself and its own people in the doing.

We must also commit ourselves to nation-building, to doing for Afghanistan, Iraq, or any other invaded nation what we did for Germany and Japan, in a new and modernized form. This means stationing troops and enforcing not only peace but new local prosperity, even if doing so takes decades. Global politics is not a zero sum game: a rebuilt and frankly improved Germany and Japan have proven good trading partners, safe vacation spots, and positive economic and cultural influences on their entire regions.

We must also remember that democracy and capitalism are not themselves the objectives. I have no problem with a benevolent dictatorship, although such creatures are rare indeed. The enemy is not a range of forms of government, but governments that kill their people or let them starve or die of disease or go without schooling or go without protection while governmental rulers build themselves palaces and estates, not intrinsically evil but evil in such circumstances.

At the same time, we must also not sit in our powerful perch while others suffer. We must commit ourselves to what I am calling New Imperialism. America’s unprecedented global power comes with responsibility, and we abdicate that responsibility at our own as well as the world’s peril.

Yesterday, an American President with whom I disagree more than agree, whom I think reigns unjustly if not unconstitutionally, spoke in the Congress to America and the world. I do not wish to concern myself with all of his proposals, but must take note of his commitment to this new, kinder imperialism. In his praiseworthy dedication to helping suffering people around the world, from AIDS as well as from their own governments, he has taken the only path of conscience. I caution him to follow my advice on limiting civilian and even enemy casualties and following invasion with lasting commitment, but must applaud his courage in taking a path of open-eared righteousness.

When our government paid millions to produce television commercials advertising acceptance of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S., Arab groups rightly pointed out that the real issues were not being addressed. Some, like the U.S.’s guilt-ridden and security-governed support of Israeli crimes against civilians, while condemning Palestinian crimes against civilians, must still be addressed. But one of the concerns is the oft-felt and far too often true belief that American values, from freedom to safety, do not seem to apply to non-Americans. From this derives the courage and importance of what Bush has done, doing more in a few words than a campaign of advertisements.

This is 2003. Possessing the power to make a difference, we can no longer sit idly by while governments kill their starving people, nor while preventable diseases ravage an entire continent. We can no more be paralyzed by either conscience or indifference while people suffer on the opposite side of the world than we can when they do across the street. Such action is only what any good person or people would do in such a circumstance.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT

This column is now officially designated occasional. I'll do my best to keep them flowing, and will without doubt complete the series begun, but my schedule no longer permits a weekly column. In payment, you shall receive other projects by my authorship. And, in my defense, I've noted that this column started as a brief and somewhat ephemeral essay and has become essentially a series of full articles, using the looser format of the column to break with traditional essay structures. I know of no weekly column doing this, even by far more famous writers than I presently am.

Your assignment, thank you, is to tell someone about this site. The January 2003 statistics for ContinuityPages.com, my site dedicated to the study of comic books, are considerably up, but I'm a bit demoralized, frankly, by the continuing lower level of visitors received by this site, from which ContinuityPages.com spun off. This is more than selfish: what I'm trying to create here is a storehouse for ideas and a community of thoughtful people, and I've made a hell of a lot of work available for free here to benefit that cause. I hope it's appreciated by you, as your contribution -- even if limited to reading -- is appreciated by me.

Discuss this column online on the message board.