{"id":66018,"date":"2004-07-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-07-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2004\/07\/05\/pourquoi-le-modele-americain-est-touche-mortellement\/"},"modified":"2004-07-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-07-05T00:00:00","slug":"pourquoi-le-modele-americain-est-touche-mortellement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2004\/07\/05\/pourquoi-le-modele-americain-est-touche-mortellement\/","title":{"rendered":"Pourquoi le \u201cmod\u00e8le\u201d am\u00e9ricain est touch\u00e9 mortellement<\/em><\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pourquoi le mod\u00e8le am\u00e9ricain est touch\u00e9 mortellement<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t5 juillet 2004 Un article de Michael Ignatieff, paru le 30 juin dans l’International Herald Tribune<\/a>, situe parfaitement le probl\u00e8me actuellement pos\u00e9 aux USA.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLe parcours d’Ignatieff est int\u00e9ressant. Michael Ignatieff est un de ces intellectuels lib\u00e9raux internationalistes, qu’on peut mettre aux c\u00f4t\u00e9s d’un Salman Rujdie par exemple. Ces intellectuels lib\u00e9raux se caract\u00e9risent par une affirmation lib\u00e9rale et d\u00e9mocratique, une hostilit\u00e9 affirm\u00e9e aux concepts trop identitaires (comme la nation) et aux concepts int\u00e9gristes bien entendu, et un ralliement r\u00e9cent \u00e0 la puissance am\u00e9ricaine comme bras arm\u00e9 pour imposer la d\u00e9mocratie.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLes prises de position de ces lib\u00e9raux en faveur de l’attaque de la Serbie en 1999, alors qu’ils d\u00e9non\u00e7aient jusqu’alors le militarisme am\u00e9ricain repr\u00e9sent\u00e9 par le Pentagone et sa puissance militaire, sont caract\u00e9ristiques de leur \u00e9volution de ces r\u00e9centes ann\u00e9es. Ils devinrent ainsi des lib\u00e9raux interventionnistes, partisans d’une sorte de chose qu’on pourrait nommer l’agression d\u00e9mocratique \u00e0 outrance, sans craindre ces assemblages \u00e9trangement contradictoires de termes si antinomiques. Bien entendu, l’attaque du 11 septembre 2001 les a conduits \u00e0 soutenir sans r\u00e9serve les \u00c9tats-Unis, bien que les USA eussent \u00e0 leur t\u00eate un pr\u00e9sident archi-conservateur, homme des lobbies p\u00e9troliers, partisan de l’industrie de l’armement, etc. Tout alla \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s bien (c’est selon) jusqu’\u00e0 la guerre contre l’Irak et les soubresauts qui suivirent. Depuis, les divers scandales, le comportement des forces US, le Torturegate<\/em>, ont conduit \u00e0 des r\u00e9visions d\u00e9chirantes chez certains. C’est le cas de Ignatieff (au contraire de Rujdie, par exemple).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tMais son article va beaucoup plus loin que le seul cas de la guerre contre l’Irak, dont Ignatieff ne remet pas fondamentalement en cause le principe (abattre un dictateur malfaisant). Ce que met en cause Ignatieff, c’est le principe m\u00eame de l’exceptionnalisme am\u00e9ricain.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab It has been a charged and burdened time the D-Day commemorations, the death of a president, the daily carnage in Iraq, the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison, a July 4 just over the horizon – the sublime and the squalid, the decent and the desperate in American life so overlaid upon one another that it is hard to reconcile the high rhetoric of one moment with the terrible reality of the other.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb The clash between the rhetoric of American democracy and the reality of American life is eternal. Indeed, it is the very essence of the American story. No other democracy is so exposed by these painful moral juxtapositions, because no other nation has made a civil religion of its self-belief.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb The abolition of cruel and unusual punishment was a founding premise of that civil religion. This was how the fledgling republic distinguished itself from the cruel tyrannies of Europe. From this sense of exceptionalism grew an exceptional sense of mission. The question is whether these reaffirmations still inspire Americans to be better than they actually are, or whether the nation’s rhetoric has degenerated into a ritual concealment of what the country has actually become.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tSuit une analyse rapide d’Ignatieff sur la confrontation entre ce que l’Am\u00e9rique veut \u00eatre, pr\u00e9tend \u00eatre, affirme \u00eatre, et ce qu’elle est en r\u00e9alit\u00e9, comme nous l’ont montr\u00e9 les derniers \u00e9v\u00e9nements durant l’occupation de l’Irak, et, plus largement, dans le cours de la guerre contre la Terreur.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIgnatieff se r\u00e9f\u00e8re \u00e0 des situations historiques fameuses, \u00e0 des courants importants de l’histoire am\u00e9ricaine, \u00e0 des principes essentiels de l’am\u00e9ricanisme. Pour constater que, bien souvent, les \u00e9v\u00e9nements qui r\u00e9sult\u00e8rent de l’action am\u00e9ricaine furent en contradiction avec ces situations, ces courants, ces principes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab Theodore Sorensen, who as a young man wrote President John F. Kennedy’s best speeches, gave a commencement speech of his own recently that was not so much an address as a cry of anguish. He remembered a time when you could go overseas and walk down avenues named after Lincoln, Jefferson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Kennedy. Hardly anyone is naming streets after Americans in the cities of the world these days.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb What has happened to our country? Sorensen exclaimed. We have been in wars before, without resorting to sexual humiliation as torture, without blocking the Red Cross, without insulting and deceiving our allies and the UN, without betraying our traditional values, without imitating our adversaries, without blackening our name.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb Sorensen’s anguish was genuine, but it was forgetful. He forgot Vietnam, the stain that formed on his martyred president’s watch and went on to blight American prestige and power for decades. Iraq is not Vietnam, but still it is salutary to recall that America does not always prevail in the end. It is time to admit that America’s story includes defeat and failure. For if the country needs anything as it faces up to Iraq, it is to put away the messianic and missionary oratory of presidential funerals and learn some humility while there is still time.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tAvec ces phrases, Ignatieff commence l’enterrement douloureux de l’exceptionnalisme am\u00e9ricain, la force qui, pendant bien plus d’un demi-si\u00e8cle, et, pour certains, depuis deux si\u00e8cles, a guid\u00e9 tant de conceptions et de jugements du monde. L’exceptionnalisme am\u00e9ricain, effectivement, g\u00eet dans les prisons d’Abu Ghraib (entre autres lieux). \u00ab At Abu Ghraib, America paid the price for American exceptionalism, the idea that America is too noble, too special, too great to actually obey international treaties or international bodies. Enthralled by narcissism and deluded by servility, American lawyers forgot their own Constitution and its peremptory prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Any American administration, especially this one, needs to learn that in paying decent respect to the opinions of mankind (Jefferson’s phrase) America also pays respect to its better self.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLe constat final d’Ignatieff est particuli\u00e8rement d\u00e9rangeant. Il est d\u00e9rangeant pour ceux qui croient encore dans l’exceptionnalisme am\u00e9ricain, mais il est d\u00e9rangeant \u00e9galement pour Ignatieff lui-m\u00eame, car, apr\u00e8s tout, la guerre contre l’Irak a \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9clench\u00e9e au nom de l’exceptionnalisme am\u00e9ricain, et Saddam a \u00e9t\u00e9 jug\u00e9 si abominable par les tribunaux humanitaires inspir\u00e9s et inform\u00e9s par l’exceptionnalisme am\u00e9ricain. D’o\u00f9 une question qui hantera un jour Ignatieff : comment rester partisan de cette guerre-l\u00e0 contre Saddam si la juste cause (l’exceptionnalisme am\u00e9ricain) qui l’a suscit\u00e9e et d\u00e9clench\u00e9e s’av\u00e8re aussi peu fond\u00e9e ?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab All this shows that the world does not exist to be molded to American wishes. It is good that the United States has wanted to be better than it is. It is good that the death of Ronald Reagan gave it a week to revive its belief in itself. But it cannot continue to bear this burden of destiny. For believing that it is Providence’s chosen instrument makes the country overestimate its power; it encourages it to lie to itself about its mistakes; and it makes it harder to live with the painful truth that history does not always or even very often obey the magnificent but dangerous illusions of American will.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pourquoi le mod\u00e8le am\u00e9ricain est touch\u00e9 mortellement 5 juillet 2004 Un article de Michael Ignatieff, paru le 30 juin dans l’International Herald Tribune, situe parfaitement le probl\u00e8me actuellement pos\u00e9 aux USA. Le parcours d’Ignatieff est int\u00e9ressant. Michael Ignatieff est un de ces intellectuels lib\u00e9raux internationalistes, qu’on peut mettre aux c\u00f4t\u00e9s d’un Salman Rujdie par exemple.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faits-et-commentaires"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}