U.S. and the others in history

I do not know if I totally understand Loewen but I think he argues (as Ben also says briefly in his blog post prompt) that history records (or any kinds of records like news, media, even the documentary movies) are written/made in a way that the United States is the only important agent in history. In this piece of news, Obama's calculated gamble on Libya strategy, it talks about how the U.S. (and its president, Obama) wants to partly back out of Libya crisis, becoming the “supporting role” and leave more responsibility to Britain and France (these two are “the second U.S.”, or the “great man” of European), in short the U.S. turning (or wants to turn) the leadership over to European. It says that this is the U.S. president gamble and if this gamble works, it will benefit both sides (both the U.S. and the Europeans). The news says that this backing out of the U.S. will reduce the costs and risks for the U.S., but what the Europeans will gain is not really stated. It also says, “However, it is unclear whether the British and French can provide the required leadership. French President Nicolas Sarkozy's attempt to fill the leadership vacuum in the initial phase of the crisis was not encouraging in this regard… However, this does not mean that the United States can completely opt out and leave everything to the Europeans. For the Libyan intervention to succeed, the U.S. will need to remain strongly engaged diplomatically, even if its European allies assume a greater share of the military burden.” Which means the U.S. will still be in the leader role regardless the reduction in costs and risks. In this news, the U.S. is mentioned from top to bottom, Britain and France are mention twice, Libya is mentioned as a faceless country in crisis, NATO is mentioned once at the end. In short, the U.S. is the main character here while Libya and the 28 countries in NATO are the “faceless people.”

More connections? From this piece of news, I think there is the exoteric-esoteric relationship. Even though not stated in the report, it is obvious that the U.S.’s “turning over the leadership” benefits the U.S. more than any other countries. As stated above, one of the benefits is reducing the costs and risks for the U.S., which is the exoteric. Another benefit is more name/fame involving (esoteric). If the U.S. stays in the middle in Libya crisis (which means supporting the protection for Libya people and not being the “leading guy” in military), it will not lose its name/fame on “morality play in which the U.S. typically acts on behalf of human rights, democracy” (Loewen 221), which is live up to the name. Another esoteric benefit is its oil support, but because the U.S. tries to live up to its “good guy/humanity” name, it wouldn’t want the entire world to know that it fights (or back up on “humanity” actually) for a prize of oil. For some reason, I think it is “Hegelish” as well. I think if Hegel is to read Loewen’s article, Hegel would say it is so because the U.S. is the “great man/the boots” role so everything occurs around it while “others”, important or not, remain faceless (NATO and its 28 countries), or bad (Libya government), or just “poor flowers” (the people of Libya). The “poor flowers” is what makes the bad guys (enemies) evil and the good guys (great man and friends) nice.