I think you may find that the mission to get Osama bin Laden and the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn has raised American prestige in the Third World to heights unprecedented since the invasion of Iraq quite unintentionally. I know the conventional wisdom says that America was hated from the moment it invaded Iraq, but as Lee Smith recounts in his book, the Strong Horse and as I myself witnessed in Lebanon, it positively thrilled much of the Arab street, only they will only confess it in secret.
If you go down to the Times of India you will read comment after comment that says “only in America could such a powerful man be taken off an airplane and made to parade in a police lineup”; “this is true democracy” and “my faith in the world has been restored”. For a world that is accustomed to watching the powerful stamp on the faces of the common man, this the arrest is wonderous, almost unbelievable and nearly on par with the sight of SEALs fleeting through Abbottabad.
I do not say this to prejudge DSK, who may be innocent, only to point out that this is the way much of the world likes to see America; mighty, confident and meting out almost magical justice with seeming effortlessness.
The USS Carl Vinson was recently in Manila, and President Aquino and his cabinet were like delighted kids at an amusement park just waiting to see the F-18s catapaulted off the deck, and the acres of dark gray nonskid-surfaced steel deck dotted with tie-down points, and most of all, though they were requested not to ask, and politely never dreamed of asking, where Bin Laden went to Davy Jones. It was one of those moments when the visitors, in a transformation peculiar to that country, felt proud to be Americans and behaved themselves that way, even if they were technically not.
The truth is that nobody loves an America that goes around shopping apologies. Nor do they like an America that acts like the old Soviet Union. But they do unabashedly love a USA as it dreams to be; with the FBI running down the bad guys and the Marines shooting up the extraterrestrial monsters in Los Angeles. When Superman stands on a skyscraper and proudly proclaims that he aims to uphold Truth, Justice and the American Way he is expressing a secret fantasy felt in so many of the downtroddden parts of the world. “Gee how I wish we had someone like that!” And if you look carefully at the faces staring at the screen, you will see no sophisticated derision; only tears of hopeful joy.
