America’s lost decade

COLUMN

print this

By Pekka Mykkänen
     
      He was jokingly called the Ice Man or Mr. Frosty. The latter reference was to the children’s song Frosty the Snowman, in which a snowman magically comes to life and starts to play with the children.
      But this Frosty did not rise up from the midst of pieces of ice at all. The tape stayed on the eyes of Manadel al-Jamadi and the bruises remained on his face as officers pondered what to do with his body.
      Al-Jamad was suspected of anti-American action, and for that reason he was taken from his home to the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prison. During his arrest and in his initial interrogation, al-Jamadi was accidentally beaten to death.
     
Many Finns have seen pictures of al-Jamadi. In one of them, a smiling Sabrina Harman, holding her thumb up, is seen. She is an American soldier who looks like an ordinary girl next door. She and her fellow soldiers took souvenir photographs next to the Iraqi man’s body.
      The scandalous photos were leaked to the public in April 2004. A new chapter began in the “war against terror”, which the United States launched exactly ten years ago after the terror attacks of September 11th.
      The pictures of Abu Ghraib, which bore evidence to the torture, defilement, and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners, were like the Berlin Wall or September 11th. There were distinct periods of time before and after each of them. As a result of that, and of innumerable other torture scandals, the United States lost the war in many ways – a war that was supposed to be about the destruction of Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida organisation and the Taleban movement which gave them shelter.
     
It was said that the torture was understandable after al-Qaida killed nearly 3,000 innocent people with its air attacks.
      The understanding of torture is a reminder of how vulnerable the democratic system can be. Former US President George Washington understood that torture is practiced by tyrannical governments, and not by modern democracies striving for something better – something that bin Laden, who was killed in May, could not abide.
      Washington, who was leading the War of Independence against Britain, absolutely forbade the American soldiers to torture British prisoners, saying “...let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army”.
     
In the hands of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, clocks were turned back hundreds of years.
      It was through Bush that the world was told to believe that “the greatest ideological struggle of the 21st century” was being waged between the United States and al-Qaida. In reality, the al-Qaida, bin Laden, and Afghanistan war was put on the back burner at the threshold to the war in Iraq, in the first quarter of the third year of the century, eight and a half long years ago.
      In the autumn of 2001 the rest of the world felt a deep sympathy toward the United States, and was willing to approve very strong actions by the Americans. The endorsement was exceeded considerably, and the United States ended up losing a large amount of its prestige and influence in handling world affairs.
     
Democracy is not the only thing that has come under threat in recent years. The success story of the world’s strongest state has been built on liberal democracy, in addition to a free market economy.
      In the autumn of 2008 it was seen how a disturbance that had emerged in unbridled financial capitalism had threatened to cause the entire world economy to collapse in the blink of an eye.
     
Before the financial disaster the United States had given advice to other countries in the world on how they should run their economies in the spirit of the “Washington Consensus”.
      After the fall of the Lehman Brothers investment bank, the “Washington Consensus” also collapsed. It was replaced by continued unrest on global markets, and an anxiety felt by ordinary people for their American, Greek, and Finnish dream.
     
History will not forget the victims of the 2001 terror attacks, nor the mistakes made afterwards. The first decade of the century will be remembered as the decade of the war in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Lehman Brothers, and the wasted prestige of the United States – as a lost decade.
      However, the decade was not wasted in China, India, and Brazil. China especially has improved its position with surprising speed, as if hidden from the Americans who were lost in the fog of their war against terror.
     
Since January 2009 it has been seen that neither just one Barack Obama, nor perhaps just one generation, will be enough to fix the mistakes made by Bush and Wall Street. Obama has not managed to close the Guantánamo prison camp, and he has not had the resilience to lead the world in important questions, such as action against climate change. The economic vortex is sucking energy from everything else.
      In the midst of this gloom, it is good to keep in mind that the United States is still the richest, most influential, and most inventive country on our planet, with a tremendous ability to shed its skin. Therefore it would not be surprising if the United States were again to return to the limelight, as it did in the years after the Vietnam War.
      However, it would appear more likely that the United States has moved into a state of long-term decline. The country will not necessarily have any business in the place where it stood in the autumn of 2001: that of an unquestionable world leader.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 11.9.2011
     
The writer is an editorial writer and former Washington correspondent for Helsingin Sanomat. His book, Amerikka – hiekkaan valuvia unelmia - “America, dreams flowing into sand” was published on Monday last week.
     


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Where were you on 9/11? (6.9.2011)

PEKKA MYKKÄNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
pekka.mykkanen@hs.fi