America owns this nightmare: Everything Thomas Friedman and the media gets wrong about the migrant

[malaise]

crisis
http://www.salon.com/2015/09/09/america_owns_this_nightmare_everything_thomas_friedman_and_the_media_gets_wrong_about_the_migrant_crisis/
<snip>
It is not that the West, or America in particular, is responsible for everything that befalls our awful world. Readers sometimes make it known that they assume this to be the ruling view in this column. But they are grossly unfair and must be corrected: The West, and American in particular, is responsible for almost everything now going wrong across the planet. This is no kind of default political position. It is a detached observation—the kind most Americans dread most.

There is not much case for objecting to this thought. Since Columbus hit the rocks in Hispaniola, and da Gama anchored off the Malabar Coast six years later, the West has insisted on leading all the rest. By and large, the world as we have it—defiled, disorderly, violent—is our world. We Westerners have known best for half a millennium, and our leaders do not take orders—or even suggestions—from anybody. Whatever you see out your window or across any ocean is the doing of those we are content to leave in charge.

You may not yet realize that you are reading a column about the migrant crisis in Europe. But it is always best to begin at the beginning. Syrians, Iraqis, Libyans, Afghans, South Asians—one way or another, directly or indirectly, immediately or at a slight remove, they are all victims of the policies through which the Western powers have sought over centuries to impose their will upon weaker people they thought worth disrupting, subjugating and exploiting.

I hope some photographers win press prizes this year for the images coming out of the crisis zones. For me they produce a very weird mixture of sorrow and shame, and I know I am not alone in either case. All those lives interrupted, ruined or lost altogether: Who cannot be moved? But it is only the honest among us who can then admit that every picture coming from a Mediterranean beach or a highway in Hungary is a mirror a migrant holds up to us.
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A most excellent read

[KG]

1. this:

Syrians, Iraqis, Libyans, Afghans, South Asians—one way or another, directly or indirectly, immediately or at a slight remove, they are all victims of the policies through which the Western powers have sought over centuries to impose their will upon weaker people they thought worth disrupting, subjugating and exploiting.

[KG]

2. btw - these people are refugees, not 'migrants'

'migrant' implies they WANT to leave everything behind, walk for miles or make dangerous seas journeys, to escape a brutal three-sided civil war.

[malaise]

3. Agreed

[Hortensis]

4. So how'd WE end up OWNING 1000 years of "Western" policy?

Or even the last 100? Even if we were as magnificent as the American Exceptionalism nationalists like to believe, and multiplying every crime against humanity we have ever committed by 2 just on general principles, we couldn't own the behavior of an entire planet.

We are not that big and have never been that powerful.

I might add, that's terribly insulting to the rest of humanity. They are always busily committing their own crimes and creating their own achievements. They're not nothing compared to us.

[malaise]

5. Huh? Where did he say that?

It is not that the West, or America in particular, is responsible for everything that befalls our awful world. Readers sometimes make it known that they assume this to be the ruling view in this column. But they are grossly unfair and must be corrected: The West, and American in particular, is responsible for almost everything now going wrong across the planet. This is no kind of default political position. It is a detached observation—the kind most Americans dread most.

[bemildred]

6. Word.

"Great reckoning" indeed.
Mr. Smith is eloquent today.