What Are We Defending and Why?

American nationalistic beliefs don’t align with the world’s perspective because we don’t know our history and disbelieve dissident narratives.

Photo by Designecologist via Pexels

I listened to the Counting Crows, Films About Ghosts album to travel to the time I believed the US was who it said it was and life was meaningful.

While the US and NATO invaded Iraq, I moved to Barcelona, not knowing I’d unlearn everything I had learned. The anti-American, NATO, and war sentiment surged throughout Europe, and Europeans condemned Americans for their bleak anti-war movement. They were furious.

The 2004 Madrid City bombings intensified anti-US tensions, and Spaniards blamed the attacks on the US and a Spanish conservative party for dragging the country into war. Spain pulled its troops out of Iraq a few months later, and I learned Europeans aren’t fond of us.

Europeans blatantly regarded Americans as stupid, naive, arrogant, and nationalistic, not glorious WWII liberators. They distrusted NATO and US interventions, staging unwavering protests while their governments aligned with American neocolonialism, neoconservative, and neoliberalism (free-market capitalism).

Europe transformed my perspective, revealing contrary information to the…