visions périphériques

“American people are not the same as American government,” a common refrain, heard this time over the gurgle of shisha pipes, the Nile slipping silently by only a few feet away, awash with the broken-up reflections of neon lights from mosques, storefronts, and other riverfront cafés exactly like the one in which we sat. Mohammad is a day trader for the largest bank in Egypt. In a pressed designer shirt, open to the third button, black slacks, and slick shoes, he would breeze past the doorman at any New York nightclub. In the United States, however, where he travels often for business, Mohammad does not slip so easily past Transportation Security Administration officials. Worse, they regularly harass him. Hence the guarded statement: “American people are not the same as American government.”

In the summer of 2003, in the Paris Metro, I sat next to a disheveled man of about sixty with an academic air about him. He was holding a battered briefcase, wearing tweed. He eyed me up and down before asking me, with a heavy French accent, “Are you a real soldier, or just pretend?” I was wearing a Valley Forge Military t-shirt with an Army patch sewn onto the right sleeve, nothing officially designating me as a member of the military, but enough to suggest I might have a connection. “A real soldier,” I replied. Seconds later, he rose. We’d come to his stop: Cluny-La Sorbonne. As he squeezed past me, he said, “Please tell your country to be more fair to us zee next time.” It wasn’t hostile, not even rude. The man—a professor, I imagine—seemed genuinely disappointed, maybe even hurt. I have never forgotten the feeling I had in my stomach after that encounter.

That was the day I realized how callously George Bush had taken the American ideals of democracy, justice, and moral clarity, and dragged them through the mud. They had been tarnished before, plenty of times, but never so badly during my lifetime. And Bush should’ve known better. We all should have known better.

Since that summer, I’ve heard the refrain over and over, all over the world, in various formations. Sometimes it’s subtle, something as simple as, “I love American people.” But usually it follows the prescribed format, a declaration of understanding that amounts to, “I know you and your countrymen have totally lost control of your government, and I can forgive that.” Because that’s what it means; to say that the American people and the American government are not the same is to say that the politics do not represent the polis, or, “We the People.” Ergo, our democracy is not representative. But what if the worst is true? What if our government does represent the people? What if we have only ourselves to blame? What if our responses to the September 11 attacks were arrogant, selfish, and reckless, not as a government, but as individual citizens?

Nationalism is a frightening thing. While nationalism and patriotism are bedfellows, the latter implies a heart-and-soul connection to a country, while the former implies only rote obedience, or worse, a collective submission to power. Virulent nationalism gave birth to Hitler and gave the Nazis carte blanche in their campaign of terror and genocide. Nationalism, not patriotism, enabled Joseph McCarthy to turn the American justice system into a diabolical charade. In the fervor of nationalism, ideals are dismantled, and individual citizens are completely disregarded. All of this happens in the shadow of our flag. In these instances, the flag shields the nation’s eyes from its own internal destruction.

In the month after September 11, I put an American flag magnet on my Volkswagen Passat. My mother placed a similar magnet on the rear hatch of her car. Most Americans, it seemed, were eager to express their solidarity with fellow citizens. We grieved together. Quickly, however, grief turned to fear, fear turned to hatred, and the impulse toward collective sorrow ground toward collective vengeance. Soon, American flag magnets were joined by stickers with phrases like, “Terrorist Hunting Permit,” and a seemingly harmless word, “Pride,” printed over the image of a waving flag.

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. Wrath is another. Vengeance still another. As a country, and as individuals, we have fallen prey to these sins, allowing pride to mask our wrath, seeking vengeance over understanding.

It all happened so fast. I can remember passing through the security checks at Dulles as a kid with pocket knives and other assorted blades in my carry-on, on my way to Minnesota for the annual wonder week of fishing and waterskiing at a family friend’s home. When I passed through security coming into Atlanta from Kuwait, in a special line, after deplaning from a U.S. Army chartered flight, the T.S.A. official confiscated my Gerber multitool. There I was, coming home from the “war on terror,” arguing in my socks after my flight, about a pocket knife. Surely something was and is amiss.

Mohammad told me about his worst encounter with Homeland Security, one that happened, of course, when he was running for a connection. He was traveling to Los Angeles for business, carrying in his suitcase a brand new Hugo Boss dress shirt that he’d purchased the year before, only to decide, upon returning to Egypt, that the sleeves were too short. The T.S.A. officials gave him a hard time because of his Egyptian passport. They made him open his bag, and when an official saw the unwrapped shirt, he snatched it and demanded an explanation. Now, I don’t know too many shirt smugglers who carry one-shirt-payloads (actually, I don’t know any shirt smugglers at all, but I’m sure they exist), so the absurdity of this situation should be clear. The official made Mohammad empty his bag onto the table. “Why did you buy this shirt a year ago, and you still haven’t returned it?” they asked. “Because I haven’t returned to Los Angeles,” Mohammad replied, “and I’m about to miss my flight.” An inane interrogation ensued, and eventually Mohammad was sent on his way. He missed his flight.

In the same way that I tell my American friends, “Oh, don’t be put off by French waiters, it’s not you, they’re just as rude to the French,” I tried to explain to Mohammad that it’s not only profiled travelers from the Middle East who get searched, that grandmothers from Middle America—slices of genuine white bread from the heart of the American bread basket—get searched too. I’ve seen wheelchair-bound seniors carted off to the inspection area, all because they showed up a few minutes late or changed a flight at the last minute. All in the name of National Security? Give me a break.

In my experience, I have found that first impressions are eerily reliable. So what does it portend when an international traveler’s first and last experiences of America regularly come dressed in maroon sweater vests, size 52 black polyester slacks, and bad attitudes? We are projecting to the world, in this miniscule way and in many others, an image of fear and retrenchment.

The police-state atmosphere of our airports is symptomatic of our national insecurity. We are insecure about our position in the Middle East, about our own role in creating terrorism and terrorists, and about our national identity and purpose. This chronic insecurity is, perhaps, as great a threat to our country as any terrorist could pose. In our insecurity, we have allowed the federal government to consolidate executive power; we have submitted to, and sometimes encouraged, violations of our civil liberties by the federal government; and, we have stood by while our government has illegally detained and tortured foreign nationals. This, I believe, is exactly what the terrorists wanted. This, certainly, is what they want today.

I do believe that there are forces in the world that conspire to bring the United States, and everything they stand for, crashing down. I am not opposed to calling certain among those forces “terrorists,” nor do I shy from calling their brand of war making “terrorism.” Some terrorists are Arabs. Some are American. We would do well to remember that Timothy McVeigh killed as many people in Oklahoma City as the London Tube bombers killed in 2005. We would also do well to fight the war on terrorism judiciously, professionally, and discriminately. By that last word, I mean that we should no more allow our officials to harass Arabs in our airports, just because they are Arabs, than we should allow state troopers to harass Blacks, Latinos, or anyone else. When we do allow such behavior to greet our visitors, we make Osama bin Laden’s claims true—we show ourselves as racist, hostile people, or at least our government portrays us thus.

For me, the saddest thing about the destruction the Bush administration has wrought in the last eight years is that the American ideal—always part myth, party reality—has been so badly tarnished. Iraq and Guantanamo have made it very difficult for people around the world who once looked up to America and to Americans, for their energetic embrace of freedom, and for their economic, technological, and artistic innovation.

America, after Bush, is a less inspiring place. Past Presidents have violated civil liberties and recklessly invaded sovereign states, to be sure, but after Nixon, and especially after Vietnam, Bush should have known better. We all should have known better. America, after Bush, is not categorically different from any other country where government disregards the will and interest of its citizens in favor of its own agenda. Regardless of whether or not we “win” in Iraq, whatever that means, we will have a hard time undoing the damage done to our reputation. We will have a hard time reestablishing ourselves as a “beacon of freedom,” for all the world the follow.

I suppose there’s not much that we can do about the behavior of T.S.A. officials and their ilk, other than object to their condescending snippiness when we see it (I never hesitate to remind particularly rude officials of their obligation to behave professionally, though my own remarks, alas, are not always perfectly professional). We can, however, manage our own engagements with foreign travelers and foreign expatriates living in the United States. We can show them, as many have clearly shown Mohammad, that “American people are not the same as American government.” As I mentioned earlier, I have heard this sentiment from many mouths, in many tongues. Until the day comes when that phrase is no longer necessary, I will vote for a government that will characterize itself by behaving according to American values instead of merely boasting about them, all the while eroding them under the cover of “national security.”

It’s important to remember that, more than angry about American retrenchment, people like Mohammad are disappointed. Under oppressive regimes, they have looked to America with great hope. This is something we need to understand, not abuse. Our hope lies in our democracy, not in our armories.