Andrew Bacevich again.
How America can go forward.
FAREWELL, THE AMERICAN CENTURY
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Only through the exercise of candor might we avoid replicating such mistakes.
Indeed, we ought to apologize. When it comes to avoiding the repetition of sin, nothing works like abject contrition. We should, therefore, tell the people of Cuba that we are sorry for having made such a hash of U.S.-Cuban relations for so long. President Obama should speak on our behalf in asking the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for forgiveness. He should express our deep collective regret to Iranians and Afghans for what past U.S. interventionism has wrought.
The United States should do these things without any expectations of reciprocity. Regardless of what U.S. officials may say or do, Castro wonβt fess up to having made his own share of mistakes. The Japanese wonβt liken Hiroshima to Pearl Harbor and call it a wash. Iranβs mullahs and Afghanistanβs jihadists wonβt be offering to a chastened Washington to let bygones be bygones.
No, we apologize to them, but for our own good β to free ourselves from the accumulated conceits of the American Century and to acknowledge that the United States participated fully in the barbarism, folly, and tragedy that defines our time. For those sins, we must hold ourselves accountable.
To solve our problems requires that we see ourselves as we really are. And that requires shedding, once and for all, the illusions embodied in the American Century.
cant quite see this happening.β¦β¦.
https://tomdispatch.com/farewell-the-american-century/