In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks,
Americans began questioning their place in the world and the
effects that their nation’s policies have on others. Although
zealous patriots have decried that sort of thing as weak-minded
navel gazing, questioning widely held assumptions can be a useful
exercise. It gave Americans a chance to consider what it means to
be an American, a question that many people gave little time to
ruminate on.
Mark Hertsgaard’s The Eagle’s Shadow: Why America Fascinates
and Infuriates the World (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 246
pages, $23) purports to investigate what others think of America
and Americans, insights that relatively few Americans possess.
Traveling to countries that included South Africa, Egypt and China
in the months before and after September 11, Hertsgaard asked
people a simple question: What do they think of when they hear the
word “America”?
As Hertsgaard relates, most people — even those who live in the
most brutally war-torn and poverty stricken countries — actually
like America. In the United States they see a better life filled
with material prosperity, peace and freedom. Even while they hate
America’s government for a foreign policy they see as heavy-handed
and often only designed to further empower the United States,
Americans themselves they have a generally high regard for. They
don’t want to kill Americans — at least for the most part — they
want to be like Americans.
That presents a problem for Hertsgaard, whose book is less an
exercise in investigation than it is for proselytizing his own
beliefs. The Eagle’s Shadow, it turns out, is an excuse
for Hertsgaard to tell Americans how awful they are for being
prosperous, and worse, for daring to be proud of it. Little about
America, it seems, doesn’t earn his ire. Although most Americans
would consider their nation to be a positive example to the rest of
the world, Hertsgaard believes America to be a small-minded,
provincial, greedy and overly self-satisfied nation of compulsive
shoppers who don’t watch enough publicly funded television.
Each chapter of The Eagle’s Shadow, whether covering
culture, politics or foreign policy, simply serves as pretense for
Hertsgaard’s own agenda. Is America the land of plenty? Hertsgaard
is bothered by the fact that you can order many different types of
coffee in your local Starbucks. The land of the free? Only if you
ignore the fact that George W. Bush and the Republicans, in
Hertsgaard’s own words, “hijacked the White House” in Election
2000. A positive example to the world? Not if you believe America
callously exploits the rest of the world to feed its hunger for the
latest and best while crushing local cultures under the weight of
low-grade cultural exports. Even-handed in its foreign policy?
America’s support of Israel proves otherwise.
Although he believes that his book will be difficult reading for
Americans, presumably for the uncomfortable truths it contains,
it’s not for the reasons he thinks. Most readers won’t agree with
his implication that the bombing of Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf
War was an act of terrorism by the United States; nor will many
appreciate his subtle disappointment that Americans have rallied
behind the flag after September 11. Unlike Hertsgaard, Americans
will probably figure out that the reason why much of the world
hasn’t been able to replicate their success is a lack of
American-style liberty, the very force Hertsgaard excoriates
repeatedly.
The Eagle’s Shadow represents the basest form of
intellectual flimflammery. While it purports to investigate the
world’s attitudes toward America, the book actually exists to
advertise those things — which seem run the gamut — that
Hertsgaard despises about his own nation, influenced by his
political prejudices. Hertsgaard is right in that there are plenty
of people who intensely dislike the United States. Unfortunately,
many of them would appear to be like Hertsgaard himself. They are
Americans.
