The United States of America is a world empire. A century ago Teddy Roosevelt expressly campaigned for the expansion of American empire, and today we have all the hallmarks of empire. We have units of our military stationed all over the world. We use our military to enforce what our leaders say are our national interests anywhere in the world with little concern for international law, as when we violated international law by launching a war of aggression against Iraq. Our politicians clamor for the restoration and preservation of "American leadership" in the world, by which they clearly mean American domination over other countries in our own interests, particularly our short-term economic interests. Our military budget is nearly as big as the military budgets of very other nation in the world combined. We act as the world's policeman, and we are able to and do interject ourselves into remote conflicts that affect us only indirectly. The way in which it is simply assumed that the United States plays a major role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for example, demonstrates our status as the dominant world empire.
As there is for every empire there is a complex of myths that supports American imperialism. All empires have their myths. Rome had the myth of the divinity of the emperor. England had the myth of the "white man's burden" to bring civilization to the heathen, using such absurd slogans as "she stoops to conquer." Spain had the myth of the divine mission to convert indigenous American peoples to Christianity, even if they had to kill huge numbers of them to do it. We have our myths too, but most Americans have never even considered the truth that we are an empire, much less that there are myths that support the ideology of the American empire. We are an empire nonetheless, and our empire has its myths. These things are myths in the technical sense of the word. They are by and large not true, but what makes them myths is not their falsity but the way in which they are stories that function to connect people with a god, the god of the American nation. In theology a myth is not something that people believe is true but that is not true as it is in common parlance. Rather, a myth is a story that connects people to a god, be that god an idol or the one true God. The god of American imperialism is the American nation. That god is an idol. The myths of American imperialism are idolatrous and factually false, but the important point is that they truly function as myths, that is, as stories told to connect people with their idolatrous national god.
In his recent speech on the supposed end of the American combat mission in Iraq President Obama expressly or tacitly endorsed many of the myths of American empire. The idolatrous myths that were stated or assumed in President Obama's speech include at least these:
First is the myth of American exceptionalism. This is the foundational myth of American empire. It is the American equivalent of the British myth of the white man's burden. This myth connects people with American actions around the world and secures their support of those actions by asserting that the United States is a different kind of nation from every other nation, and a better one, and that we can do what others cannot simply because we are who we are. The myth of American exceptionalism posits that whatever America does is good simply because it is America that does it. This myth too is false, but Americans have so bought into it that most of them are simply puzzled when people in other nations object to something we are doing. No American politician can deny the myth of American exceptionalism and survive politically. Any politician who raises the slightest doubt about the myth of American exceptionalism is savaged as un-American. The myth of American exceptionalism posits that it would be better for them (and of course for us) for every other nation in the world to be more like us. Again, President Bush's invasion of Iraq is the prime example, as one of the lies told to support that invasion was that we were doing it to create a stable, western style democracy in Iraq that would somehow miraculously lead to the creation of other stable, western style democracies in the Middle East.
Closely related to the myth of American exceptionalism are several myths about the American military and the way we use it. One such myth is the myth that America uses military force only in the cause of justice and peace, never simply in naked self interest. This myth causes our leaders to invent just and peaceful reasons for the use of force, even when, as was the case in Iraq, there is nothing just or peaceful about our actions. Part of the myth that America uses military force only in the cause of justice and peace is the myth that America uses its military only defensively, a claim that simply is not true as a matter of fact. There was absolutely nothing defensive about our invasion of Iraq. Decades ago we changed the name of the War Department to the Defense Department. In other words, we created a myth, a story that we engage in defense not in war, a story that functions to garner the commitment of the American people to the wars the leaders choose to fight. Another part of the American military myth is the contention that service in the American military is always honorable and heroic. It may be that at times. We need not and do not deny that American military men and women often engage in acts of courage and heroism, in acts of self-sacrifice on behalf of their comrades in arms. But it is false to say that service in the American military is always noble and heroic, as the various atrocities committed by American soldiers (not only by American soldiers of course, but also by American soldiers) in every war--My Lai, Abu Ghraib, and so on--demonstrate. Beyond that, the myths about the American military cannot deny the truth that I once heard an American soldier express in a television interview. He said: “My job is to kill people and blow up their stuff.” Killing people and blowing up their stuff is neither honorable nor heroic. Nations, the United States included, must convince their people that military service is honorable and heroic because otherwise people would never accept the horror of war. Actions that in any other context would be considered heinous crimes are declared to be honorable and heroic when done by an organized military on orders from a national government. One of the verses in a great song by the Georgian Soviet protest poet/singer Bulat Okudzhava, a song he says is about an American soldier (although he would apply it to other soldiers as well, as would I) translates from the Russian: “And if something isn’t right, that’s not our problem. As they say, the motherland has ordered it. How glorious to be a simple soldier, not guilty of anything.” The myth of the honor and heroism of military service is absolutely necessary for the ruling powers, which are always willing to spend other people's lives and to order other people to kill in pursuit of their power goals.
Finally (for this essay at least) there is the myth of redemptive violence. This myth, articulated with great power by the theologian Walter Wink, asserts that violence can have redeeming value, that it can and does accomplish good, that violence used in some just, redemptive cause is not sinful, is not wrong, because of the good of the cause in which it is employed. American culture is riddled with the myth of redemptive violence. If you doubt that just look at our superhero cartoons, in which a hero figure saves the day through the use of violence against someone depicted as evil. We condition our children from a very early age with the myth of redemptive violence. It is therefore not surprising that so many Americans support violent actions by our government. The one thing that any American President can do that will drive his approval numbers up more than anything else is to go to war. That truth may in fact be the actual reason why President George W. Bush invaded Iraq. A Christian can never accept the myth of redemptive violence. Jesus Christ, the one we claim to follow, rejected the myth of redemptive violence. In its place he taught creative, assertive, nonviolent resistance to evil. That way, which Wink calls a third way between pacifism and violence, must be the way of the Christian.
There are a great many other American myths as well, including those that are domestic rather than aimed at our place and actions in the world, but we need not go into them here. As long as our political leaders, even the ones who promised us change, keep proclaiming these myths either expressly or by implication we will continue to bully our way into disasters like the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We will continue to act not truly as the champion of peace and justice that we claim to be (that claim being itself a myth of course, but one worth trying to live into) but as just another militaristic empire, the latest in a long line of such empires, each having its time of power, then declining and disappearing from history. And we will remain horribly un-self-aware. Self-awareness is the necessary first step in transformation. The transformation that we need if we are ever truly to be a just nation dedicated to peace, a transformation so much deeper than mere change, will never even begin until the American myths are laid open precisely as myths, as stories we tell to connect us to the idolatrous god of the nation, and not as the factual truths that Americans take them to be.
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