Abstract
This is how Senator John Kerry justified dissent on the Iraq War in 2008. The fact that he linked the debate on Iraq to that on Vietnam, when he had been active in Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and that he did so by using slogans pioneered in the nineteenth century—paraphrasing Carl Schurz—indicates that the debate on empire after the Spanish-American War was part of an ongoing discourse on U.S. foreign policy. The same ideas, concepts, and justifications have clashed time and again.
[P]atriotism is not love of power; or some cheap trick to win votes—patriotism is love of country. Years ago when we prote[s]ted a war, people would weigh in against us saying: “My country right or wrong.” Our answer? Absolutely, my country right or wrong. When right, keep it right. When wrong, make it right.
John Kerry (2008)1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
John Kerry, “Speech to the Democratic National Convention,” August 27, 2008, http://www.johnkerry.com/blog/entry/senator_kerry_addresses_the_democratic_national_conventionindenver/ [accessed August 28, 2009].
Barack Obama, “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Libya,” March 28, 2011, in John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, eds., The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ [accessed July 19, 2011].
George W. Bush, “Remarks at Galatasaray University in Istanbul,” June 29, 2004, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ [accessed July 19, 2011].
“Aufruf des Allgemeinen Deutschen Verbandes,” 1891; Max Weber, “Eine kraftvolle Weltpolitik als Mittel zur Überwindung Politischen Epigonentums,” Freiburger Antrittsrede, 1895; Friedrich Naumann, “Weltmarkt und Weltmacht,” 1910, in Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ed., Imperialismus: Seine geistigen, politischen und wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen (Frankfurt, a. M.: Hoffmann und Campe, 1977), 127–8, 138–41.
Paul A. Kramer, “Empires, Exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons: Race and Rule between the British and United States Empires, 1880–1910.” JAH 88.4 (March 2002), 1348–9.
Walter LaFeber, The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913 (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 207.
For the view that an anti-imperialist “isolationism” carried the day, see Robert Osgood, Ideals and Self-interest in America’s Foreign Relations: The Great Transformation of the Twentieth Century (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1953), 18–9.
For the “Roosevelt Corollary,” see Theodore Roosevelt, “Fourth Annual Message,” December 6, 1904, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ [accessed July 22, 2011]
Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978).
George W Bush, “Remarks at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention in Kansas City, MO,” August 22, 2007, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ [accessed February 25, 2008].
Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs 70.1 (1990–1991), 23–33;
“The Unipolar Moment Revisited,” The National Interest 70 (Winter 2002), 5–17. Compare Niall Fergusson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (London: Penguin Books, 2004), vii.
Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004), 310, 312;
Cullen Murphy, Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007), 206.
Copyright information
© 2012 Fabian Hilfrich
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hilfrich, F. (2012). Conclusion. In: Debating American Exceptionalism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230392908_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230392908_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-35211-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-39290-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)