Our American Cousin

Thomas Fleming writes:

The US government wants to send 1000 security agents to protect American Olympic athletes in London. Apparently, "my" government thinks the Brits are no good at transportation security.

The British media is full of the usual outrage over this latest instance of Yankee arrogance. Apparently, Londoners are haunted by the spectre of jackbooted thugs with stars-and-stripes armbands, crashing in doors and beating up little old ladies from Pakistan.

What is more worrisome, for me as an American, is the blithe assumption that US authorities have actually taken significant steps to protect Americans from terrorists and criminals. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I think everyone in Europe is aware of the high rates of violent crime we take for granted in the United States. True, much of this crime is committed by minority groups that make up perhaps 30% of the population: When African-Americans and Latin-Americans are taken out of the statistics, the US is less dangerous than Scotland. (That figure will not reassure anyone who has wandered into the wrong neighborhoods of Edinburgh or Glasgow.)

Still, our cops do not actually do a good job of protecting the citizens from street crime, and this past Summer's outbreak of flashmobs is only the most visible evidence of a reign of terror that is now imposed all over the country by lawless punks who think destruction of property and violent behavior is one of the rights enumerated in our Declaration of Independence.

Although I know any number of brave and honest cops, my own experience of local and state police in these United States has been almost uniformly negative. They do not respond to emergency calls, they are bullying and abusive to people who have committed minor violations, and, when faced with real danger, they prefer to look elsewhere. They are also thieves.

I have just returned from a little meeting on property rights. One of the topics under discussion was the charming method American towns and counties have for raising revenue: the wholesale seizure of assets. Find a rich guy, arrest him for drug possession, and then confiscate his car, his house, his money, and anything that might have been bought with dirty money. If he gets off, either because he is innocent or because the police have acted improperly, he still has to sue to get back his confiscated property and cash.

The absurdity of American law enforcement is most visible in airports, where we have to take off shoes and belts, empty our pockets even of handkerchiefs, and endure the insults and bullying of TSA screeners who are required only to have received a GED--an alternative to a high school diploma that is only slightly less meaningful than an actual diploma from one of our typical high schools that annually turn loose a horde of illiterate, lazy, and ignorant graduates.

The real experts in airport security are the Israelis, and they laugh at the TSA methods, whose only real effect has been to discourage air travel. I'd like to joing them in laugh at all this, but as a very frequent traveler I am not amused. If we really did care about protecting Americans, we would not appoint inexperienced amateurs like Janet Napolitano and Leon Panetta--politicians who have never fought or spied or guarded anyone--to the highest positions.

Then where did the geniuses in "my" government get the idea that the UK needs help from the corrupt, abusive, and ineffective police and security forces that are the plague of American life? It's simple. We Americans do everything better than you cowardly and feeble degenerates of Old Europe.

We especially despise the French, conveniently forgetting that without the French navy, army, and money, we'd still be singing "God Save the Queen." But we despise the Brits as well, who are invariably portrayed as mincing homosexuals or ineffective goofballs.

The real truth is that the Royal Marines and other special British and French military forces have been amazingly effective in combat. They are genuinely tough warriors, and candid American military officers admit that they are often better than our troops in some nasty little fight, whether in African or Afghanistan.

This prejudice against European military and security forces has been part of the American conceit from the beginning. As kiddies in school we all learned how a rag-tag band Americans defeated the whole British Empire in the Revolution. In fact, our troops were trained by European officers, many British officers refused to serve against Americans, and the French were an indispensable ally. We also learn how Andrew Jackson, in the War of 1812, slaughtered Pakenham's namby-pambies at New Orleans. In fact, the British soldiers fought like Spartans and died game.

I could go on and on through American history, to show that our extraordinary virtues are simply the inherited virtues of British and European soldiers. But, as the sun of the American Empire sinks slowly into the sea, we grow even more credulous in believing the old lies.

The US does have the greatest economy in the world, and our money has enabled us to develop and deploy the most deadly weapons that exist. To be fair, especially in the South and the West, we also have brave and capable fighting men, but it is silly to pretend that, because we have more money and a bigger population, we are better at security.

All this swagger and boasting is part of the American stereotype. It was amusing and mostly harmless 100 years ago. For an imperial nation that claims to dominate the world, it is not helpful to perpetuate the boorishness of Our American Cousin or Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad. Besides, Uncle Sam learned to swagger by imitating John Bull. Even before abandoning her empire, Britain grew up. Perhaps it is time we America did the same.