VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The new ugly Americans

U.S. Army Soldiers designated to the 10th Mountain Division stand security at Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 16, 2021. U.S. Soldiers and Marines are helping the Department of State with an organized drawdown of designated personnel in Afghanistan. (Sgt. Isaiah Campbell/U. S. Marine Corps by means of AP).
The old cultural imperialism was allegedly greedy corporatism such as Disneyland, McDonald's and Starbucks growing up worldwide to supplant regional competitors. However these services spread out since they attracted free-will consumer demand abroad. They were not imposed top down.

The U.S. existence in Afghanistan collapsed in August 2021 amid the greatest American military humiliation in modern history. A billion-dollar brand-new embassy was deserted. Numerous countless dollars in brand-new facilities at the huge Bagram Airbase was disposed.

We still do not understand the number of billions of dollars of advanced brand-new weapons were delegated the Taliban and now are making their way through global terrorists' marts. Yet, in our skedaddle, the LGBTQ flag still flew high from our brand-new Kabul embassy. A George Floyd mural was prominent on city streets.

And gender studies programs - - to the tune of $787 million in American aids - - were showcased at Kabul University, in one of the most conservative Islamic nations worldwide.

Rainbow flags and Black Lives Matter banners have actually hung from our embassy in South Korea. Such partisan cultural activism is a diplomatic first. The woke left has actually now weaponized the country's diplomatic objectives abroad to advance highly partisan and questionable agendas that can offend their hosts, and do not represent the majority of American voters in the house.

American diplomacy toward other nations appears now to depend upon their positions on transgender individuals, LGBTQ promotion, abortion, environment change and a selection of woke issues - - from using several pronouns on passports to showcasing transgender ambassadors.

That joint effort of our allies Cyprus, Greece and Israel sought to bring much required clean-burning Mediterranean natural gas to southern Europe. We imperialists interfered to ruin an important job of our closest allies.

The White House manifesto called the National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality uses a plan for how to massage countries abroad to accept our values that are increasingly at chances with much of the world's.

Do Americans actually believe that welcoming drag-queen programs at military bases, abortion to the moment of birth, transgender men completing in ladies's sports and the assured effort to ban the internal combustion engine are effective ways to make sure great relations with the United States?

No wonder the Biden administration's brand-new cultural imperialism is showing devastating for a range of reasons.

One, these imperialistic and chauvinistic programs are pressed abroad at the very time the respect for the U.S. military is at an all-time low. It was embarrassed in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon leadership of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, with Joe Biden, do not radiate proficiency. They do radiate woke pieties.

While we offend Middle East oil exporters and main Europeans, China allies with Russia and Iran. India and Turkey triangulate far from the United States. Sanctimonious hectoring while appearing weak is a bad mix.

2, these warped standards are incoherent. Is an abortion-on-demand, totalitarian China therefore an ally? How could we damn allegedly non-woke Saudi Arabia as we asked it to pump more of its non-green oil prior to the 2022 midterms?

A few of our most loyal allies remain in Eastern Europe - - Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania. These nations have experienced traumatic histories on the cutting edge versus Islamic Ottoman expansionism, czarist and Soviet hostility and German Nazi bullying and intrusion.

They are pro-american and democratic. They are now targeted by our woke imperialists due to the fact that they remain unfaltering as the most standard and religious of our European allies. Yet these nations would be most likely to dispatch reliable forces for NATO's defense than many of our left-wing, woke and militarily less capable Western European nations.

Three, most of the 7.9 billion individuals in the world are not woke. They are aspiring to acquire a modicum of the high-end and abundance considered granted in America.

The remainder of the world worries whether it will have adequate food, security, energy and shelter to live one more day. For many, the perpetual, woke virtue-signaling from affluent Americans stumbles upon as the whiny bullying of pampered, self-righteous - - and increasingly unstable - - imperialists.

4, typically the party that manages the State Department does not politically weaponize its embassies with wedge problems that have not won bulk support amongst Americans. Such abject politicalization rattles and pushes away foreign nations. They do not wish to be drawn into the American left's internal propaganda efforts that they know are bitterly controversial inside the United States.

How odd that those left wing who in the previous decried "American imperialism" are now showing the greatest imperialists of all.

Victor Davis Hanson is a recognized fellow of the Center for American Greatness and a classicist and historian at Stanford's Hoover Institution, Contact at authorvdh@gmail.com.