Andrew Golis

Here’s a novel idea: Americans should care about (and LEARN about) the rest of the world even if it’s not a country that we want to bomb. I know, seems a little crazy, but it just might work! Peter Beinart has a great article about what the conservative reaction to the Tsunami shows about their ideology. The money ‘graph:

But the irony is that defeating Islamist terrorism requires convincing people around the world that the United States does not act merely out of narrow national interest. To win over global hearts and minds, the United States must show Muslims, and others, that we are benevolent–that we want a better world for them; that we are not just in it for empire and oil. That means financial generosity–giving money for economic and social development rather than only military assistance. But it also means what might be called intellectual generosity–a genuine curiosity about the rest of the world, even when our safety is not directly threatened, even when the dramas aren’t primarily about us.

This exactly why we’re losing the War on Terror. Because the world think we’re a bunch of selfish imperialists and too often, they’re right. And they can tell we don’t care: we don’t learn other languages, travel less than almost any other industrialized nation, have a president who had been to Europe, I think, once before he was president. They can tell, that’s why we’re losing.

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