Operation American Freedom and The Call to Empire

In his speech on March 21, Gunter Grass invokes Albert Camus and the myth of Sisyphus. The patient and enduring forces of culture and civilization push the boulder up the mountain. Slowly, slowly. Only to have it roll down again. Yet we are obliged to start again, knowing that is our task and duty--as citizens, as artists, as humans.

The US, historically evoked as the City on the Hill, the land where life can dare to be different, unmarked by the recurrent and shrill calls to empire that have darkened most of human history, is led by a government that wants us--the American people--to give up this brighter side of our heritage, patiently constructed over the decades, and return instead to the 19th-century notions that plagued us. "Westward the Course of Empire" is the title of Emanuel Leutze's huge painting hanging prominently in a stairwell in the US Capitol. Now, it seems, it's "Middle-Eastward." Already in 1848, as the Congress prepared to vote on California's petition for statehood, W. H. Seward spoke dramatically: "The unity of our empire hangs on the decision of this day." You can read these words today on a monument in downtown San Francisco.

We have tried to reject military empire in the past. We thought perhaps we were over the experiments with colonies following the Spanish-American War. Our energies turned instead to economic instead of military domination--with a different set of issues.

Yet, last week in San Francisco, people were staring at Seward's words on the monument and defacing them. They were shocked by these words. They were becoming conscious of what is possibly on the horizon after we "do" Iraq. With the beginnings of that consciousness, we stand together and start pushing the boulder back up the hill. The solidarity of humankind hangs on the decisions of these days.