CULT OF PERSONALITY

Farewell America: After six years, The Observer's award-winning US correspondent Ed Vulliamy takes his leave from a wounded and belligerent nation with which, reluctantly, he has now fallen out of love (Ed Vulliamy, August 24, 2003, The Observer)

Once smitten, it should be impossible to fall out of love with America. Who could fall out of love with that New York adrenaline rush, or the clutter of the 7 Train as it grinds on stilts of iron from Manhattan out to Queens through the scents and sounds of 160 first languages? Who could fall out of love with the mighty desert when a lilac dawn fades out the constellations in its vast sky? Who could fall out of love with the muscular industry of America's real capital, Chicago, 'city of big shoulders', as the poet Carl Sandburg described it? It was insurgent Chicago that first captured my heart for America as a visiting teenager in 1970.

Now it's time to leave the United States as a supposed adult, having been a resident and correspondent for exactly as long as Tony Blair has been Prime Minister - I was appointed that May morning in 1997 that brought Britain's Conservative night to an end. Blair's love for America seems to have deepened since; but love is both the strongest and most brittle of sentiments, and mine has depreciated. I still love that adrenaline rush, the desert light, those big shoulders; but something else has happened to America during my six years to invoke that bitter love song by a great American, BB King, 'The Thrill is Gone': 'And now that it's all over / All I can do is wish you well...'

I arrived in an America regarded by the world as 'cool'. One can never be sure whether a President defines the country or vice versa, but this was Bill Clinton's America. [...]

Meanwhile out in the world, intervention by the US was either welcomed by the persecuted of Haiti and Kosovo or else craved by (but culpably denied) those in Bosnia and Rwanda - as a force of deliverance, not of empire.

The whole thing is pretty vapid, but we particularly like the bit about how welcome Bill Clinton's America was in the world. Mr. Vulliamy has apparently forgotten such things as the retreat of the USS Harlan County from Port-au-Prince, the way we cut and ran after the Battle of the Black Sea, and that the "intervention" in Kosovo was a bombing campaign which ended in Kosovo being "occupied" by an international coalition. It may be that our policies in Afghanistan and Iraq will "fail", if our intent is to create stable new governments, rather than just to depose enemies. But we already know that our policies in Haiti and Somalia failed. And if everyone withdrew from Kosovo right now it seems unlikely that it would remain stable. But even setting aside these failures, why is it that these actions, ranging from the Caribbean to Central Europe to Africa don't show Bill Clinton's America to be a force of empire? Is it just because he was "cool"? Is Mr. Vulliamy a serious journalist or a correspondent for Tiger Beat? Posted by Orrin Judd at August 24, 2003 9:39 AM