America Did Not Squander What It Never Had By Right Thinking Girl

by John Hawkins | May 17, 2006 8:51 am

Reading through some entertainment[1] related news stories, I came across this quote (referencing Jodie Foster):

The U.S. “squandered” the goodwill and sympathy other nations offered after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Foster said. She also criticized officials for the “disastrous and shameful” handling of Hurricane Katrina.

This old yarn has been in circulation since 9/12/01: the USA squandered the world’s goodwill after 9/11. It irritated me then, and now it enrages me. Not because it’s untrue – that, at least, I could forgive with a little education. No, it angers me because it says something about our enemies that nobody is willing to say:

If it takes a terrorist attack to make countries feel beneficent toward the USA, those countries are not your friends. Why would a country feel “goodwill” after a terrorist attack? Because we were, for a moment, the Victim. And as everybody knows, there is leverage in victimhood.

But America doesn’t like being anybody’s victim. It’s just not who we are. Within a day or so we were picking ourselves up and looking around for the ones who momentarily knocked us on our ass. Then we picked ourselves up and went after them with everything we had.

That whole ‘retaliation’ thing was just so gauche.

Imagine it. If we had simply lain some wreaths, had our little candlelight vigils, and agreed that Islamofacists were our friends, we’d still be buddy-buddy with just about everyone. Because, after all, you don’t need strong friends if you’re just going to lay around and be a weenie. You need friends when you’re making tough decisions and taking tough actions. Of course, once we showed our true colors, France began to burn the “We Are All Americans Today” backissues of Le Monde and decided that we were not so victimy, and therefore not as loveable. And thus the “America squandered the goodwill” meme was born.

It was never genuine anyway. Those fair-weather friends were not showing goodwill toward our way of life or our freedom, our democracy – the things we truly are.

But seriously, what does “goodwill” mean in this context? That journalists would print stories about how terrorists were stinky bad people? That’s it as far as I can see. There was no goodwill. They ran like scared little rats – they didn’t want the terrorists eyeballing them next. Goodwill indeed. What were they doing for us, exactly? Where were they when we needed them – when we were going to to do something about the terrorist attacks?

Oh yes, I remember now. They were stoking the love of Hollywood elites like Jodie Foster and Michael Moore.

We did not squander the goodwill of the country. The sympathy, maybe. But not the goodwill – because we never had any of that to begin with.

This content was used with the permission of Right Thinking Girl[2].