Those who claim that the United States has become a rapacious, arrogant, destructive, domineering and imperialistic power must somehow explain the continued independent existence of the nation of Canada.

Alongside our allegedly land-hungry and bellicose empire, the Maple Leaf Republic has flourished for more than two centuries --- vast, under-populated, resource rich and virtually defenseless. Unlike our Mexican neighbors to the south, the Canadians presented no substantial cultural or linguistic differences to sour the prospect of swallowing the Great White North. On three different occasions, Americans attempted or considered a push to absorb all or part of Canada: in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and during the complicated Venezuela Boundary Crisis with Great Britain in 1895. Nevertheless, the Yankee imperialists stopped well short of conquest and in the 21st Century era of unchallenged US hegemony, Canada has gone its own quirky way more notably than ever before, reveling in its separate destiny and distinctive institutions.

The history of U.S. respect for Canada’s continued sovereignty hardly comports with the prevailing anti-American clichés that suggest Americans long to impose on all the world the same “genocidal” approach we deployed against the Indians.

In one altogether typical fulmination, the British playwright Harold Pinter (author of joyless, often inscrutable dramas and screenplays of singular pomposity) used the occasion of his Nobel Prize for Literature to denounce the United States and all its works. In his “Pearl Harbor Day” Nobel Lecture of December 7, 2005, Pinter launched his own sneak attack on his American cousins. “The crimes of the United States,” he declared, “have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis. I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman, it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love.”

He goes on to denounce the United States for its “8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads… Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity – the possession and theoretical use of nuclear weapons – is at the heart of the present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.”

Noam Chomsky, the only contemporary philosopher to receive ardent and explicit endorsement from both Hugo Chavez and Osama bin Laden, makes similar arguments about the monstrous and dangerous nature of the United States. In his 2006 book “Failed States” the prophet intones: “Washington’s aggressive militarism is not the only factor driving the race to ‘apocalypse soon,’ but is surely a significant one. The plans and policies fall within a much broader context, with roots going back to the Clinton years and beyond…. By now, the world’s hegemonic power accords itself the right to wage war at will, under a doctrine of ‘anticipatory self-defense’ with unstated bounds.”

In addition to outspoken America-bashers like Pinter and Chomsky, who accuse the United States of a long history of exploitative, arrogant militarism going back to the early treatment of Native Americans and the very origins of the nation, there’s another strain of anti-imperialist sentiment suggesting that our arrogant role in world affairs represents a recent and alien aberration imposed by some vile conspiracy of “globalists” or “neo-cons.” These impassioned critics of the current War on Terror (many of them clustered in and around the insurgent Presidential campaign of Congressman Ron Paul), conjure up images of a pacific, noble, non-interventionist past, when America had the good sense to avoid meddling in the business of other nations. Only recently, they argue, has the Republic involved itself in needless, dangerous and undeclared wars that sacrifice the true national interest for the sake of privileged but secretive economic elites.

Both brands of anti-Americanism misstate our history and require correction. No, the involvement in far-flung, often unpopular conflicts doesn’t represent a recent innovation but characterized every stage of our emergence as a world power. And the purpose of these numerous conflicts and interventions bore little connection to colonialism or conquest and most often displayed surprisingly and surpassingly unselfish intentions.

AMERICA’S ACTIVIST INVOLVEMENT IN WORLD AFFAIRS AND FOREIGN CONFLICTS IS NOTHING NEW.

The United States fought its first war against Islamic extremism more than 200 years ago, producing inspiring victories in exotic locales, the first line of the Marines Hymn (“….to the shores of Tripoli), our first great post-Revolutionary military hero (Stephen Decatur), and his immortal toast (“Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!”).

The Barbary Wars also lasted four years (1801-05), with a brutal recurrence ten years after that, and helped to establish a long-standing U.S. tradition of small wars, or so-called “low intensity conflicts.” As Max Boot points out in his superb and eye-opening book “The Savage Wars of Peace,” 2002: “There is another, less celebrated tradition in U.S. military history – a tradition of fighting small wars. Between 1800 and 1934, U.S. Marines staged 180 landings abroad. The army and navy added a few small-scale engagements of their own. Some of these excursions resulted in heavy casualties; others involved almost no fighting ….Some were successful, others not. But most of these campaigns were fought by a relatively small number of professional soldiers pursuing limited objectives with limited means. These are the nonwars that Kipling called ‘the savage wars of peace.’” Continued...