Credibility
The American political establishment has begun scrutinizing the belligerent behavior of Secretary of Defense/War Pete Hegseth, following a recent Washington Post article on his take no prisoners policy on bombing fishermen in the Caribbean. While some folks have expressed horror at the ruthlessness and cruelty of his policy, much of the focus has been on the rules of war and how violating them reflects on the reputation of the US as a leader of Western values, democracy, the free world, and all those clichés leftover from the Cold War. Again and again history has proven those clichés to be grotesque lies by the actual behavior of the US in the Middle East, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, and so on.
It is ever thus. The conversation isn’t about the atrocities committed but how they make us look bad. We can’t sell arms to the Saudis and Israel that massacre Yemens and Palestinians if we look like bloodthirsty warmongers. We are defending civilization from the lies of TikTok, right, Hillary? Sarcasm aside, people outside the bubble of US propaganda know that our government’s credibility on democracy and human rights is only something that Western elites place any faith in.
America has credibility? Think that train already left.