The war was only a week old, and a friend was already complaining about the protestors. Not the anti-war ones. The people on the other side of the street–the ones protesting the idea of protest. Men and women decked in red, white, and blue, angry and solemn and proud, waving their flags like weapons. Perhaps they didn’t reflect the majority of Americans who supported this war, but they were the faces he saw whenever he turned on the TV. The most patriotic of patriots.

My friend was against the war when it started, largely because he felt it would bring about more terrorism. But he did not march in any of the demonstrations. He isn’t an activist. He’s the son of Korean immigrants, who worked the counters of a convenience store for years so that their two children could go to college. My friend was born in the United States, and has never stepped foot outside of it.
  
And yet something turned him off about the pro-war protestors. They represented the America that has shunned him, he told me. Shunned him? He has a good job, a college education, a comfortable lifestyle. America has been good to him, he is the first to admit. But he watched the people wave their flags and say, I am an American. This is America.” And they were almost all white. And the things they were saying reminded him of the co-workers and acquaintances and strangers who have uttered ignorant, even racist, things in his presence–about African Americans or Arab Americans when they think he’s on their side, about “Orientals” when they forget. He does not feel a part of their America. And yet he is just like them: an American by birth.
  
Nothing brings out patriotism more than war. A public that was initially skeptical of war in Iraq rallied in support of it, once American soldiers were fighting, and dying, abroad. Significant dissent emerged, but it fought a holding action against the tide of patriotism that swept up everyone–journalists, union workers, soccer moms, and Wall Street bankers alike. Now that the fighting seems to be ending, and coalition forces have apparently succeeded in toppling Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime, that sense of pride has only swelled. Even some longtime critics of the war have changed their tune. They watch TV images of Iraqis celebrating as U.S. soldiers tear down statues of the deposed tyrant, and they, too, love America and the freedom it has brought the world.
  
Is this surge in patriotism a good thing? Of course it is, friends tell me. I receive patriotic emails expressing support for America and its soldiers; as always, the flags are there, fluttering in a gentle HTML breeze. They may lack solemnity, but in the symbol itself they express the same sentiment as those gracing the steps of marble monuments, those draped over soldiers’ coffins: Liberty was won with the blood of Americans. Your freedom to speak, to criticize, to live as a minority amid a majority–was bought with that blood.
  
But patriotism has a darker side, one that has become quite clear in the last few weeks of war. Now might be the time to consider whether we Americans or Britons really should consider ourselves patriots, or whether defending our ideals and supporting our soldiers can be undertaken in the name of a higher cause.
  
It’s true that patriotism–love and devotion for one’s nation–gives people a shared identity. In the United States, for instance, settlers from all over Europe gradually came to see themselves as a single, distinct group of people. Though their nation was built, at first, on the exclusion and genocide of indigenous tribes and black slaves, today even many Native Americans and African Americans proudly declare their American-ness.

Patriotism may be necessary to build a nation, but sometimes it grows too quickly, becoming cancerous. The example always mentioned is Nazi Germany. Suffering amid a massive economic depression, hungry for their former glory, the German people turned to a charismatic leader who promised prosperity, power, and revenge–first against the Jews, and then against all of the nation’s “enemies.” Adolf Hitler brought his country to ruin, but he could not have emerged without the obsessive patriotism of ordinary Germans, whose love of country reached such a feverish pitch that they began to value German ways over all other ways, German life over all other life.

The United States has not reached that level of love-turned-hate, but it has come close. Today, things are looking grim once again. Patriotism of a rather pernicious kind is enshrined in the U.S. PATRIOT Act, legislation that has stripped away many of the protections that U.S. citizens once had from the power of big government. It also appears in the protect-America-at-all-costs policy of detaining foreign prisoners of war in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba–without charge, without trial, and far from any eyes who could judge whether they’re being treated fairly. At the root of these policies are two disturbing beliefs. One is that love of America demands giving up the very thing that America is supposed to be about–liberty. The other is that people elsewhere in the world do not deserve the rights or respect that Americans do. It’s the same sentiment that in the past allowed Americans in the majority to enslave African Americans, drive indigenous people from their lands, persecute union workers or put Japanese Americans in camps: They are not “American,” and so they are not worthy of the same treatment as we are.

Since the war in Iraq began, the uglier face of patriotism has been popping up on a daily basis. Consider the recent behavior of our fearless public watchdog, the mainstream news media. Throughout this war, public reaction–or just fear of public reaction–has prompted many news outlets to silence their own dissenting voices. This is obvious in American news channels like CNN, FOX, and MSNBC, where the coverage has been dramatically more partisan than what you find on the BBC–or even CNN International. Those who have tried to buck the trend have been punished outright: At MSNBC, liberal talk show host Phil Donahue was canned after news executives complained in an internal memo that his show could become “a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

Supporters of patriotism say that Americans must suffer the rollback of civil liberties and the censorship of dissenting voices now so that they can enjoy their freedom once the fighting is over. But it is not clear what freedom we will have left to enjoy, if the present course of government action continues.
  
More importantly, it’s not clear that Americans will make themselves any safer by alienating the rest of the world with a belligerent self-love. I should be clear here: There were many good reasons for the United States and Britain to overthrow a murderous tyrant like Saddam Hussein. The problem with the present war is that the United States entered it in violation of international law, with the public support of only a single Arab government, and without the backing of the United Nations. This kind of arrogance has radicalized Muslims around the world, who see the war as a war against Islam, and will likely cause more grief for the United States in the years to come. Meanwhile, America continues to lose the real “war against terrorism”–the battle over the hearts and minds of people in other countries, especially Muslim countries.

To win that war, we will need more than tanks and cruise missiles. We will need a sustained effort to change how other people in the world see the United States. The first step is for people here to understand why people in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Indonesia think the way they do about America. Sadly, many otherwise decent and patriotic Americans cannot put themselves in the shoes of people who are enraged by the U.S. government’s policies. They insist that their country is the world’s savior, because only it has the will to fight tyranny abroad (as the case of Iraq proves). But elsewhere in the world, many people see George W. Bush as a greater threat to peace than Saddam Hussein.
  
Some people look at this resentment abroad and conclude that foreigners are simply jealous of American power. Even if this has some truth to it, many Americans don’t realize how many good reasons people in other countries have to be suspicious of the U.S. government. We seem to be the only people in the world who do not appreciate the fact that the U.S. government’s rhetoric of “liberation” too often masks cold self-interest. Just look at the history of U.S. interventions in Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, South Vietnam, East Timor, and Laos, or the support that the U.S. government has given to authoritarian and brutal regimes in the Middle East (Saddam’s included, up until his invasion of Kuwait).
  
Americans are rightfully proud when their soldiers step in to end atrocities in war-ravaged places like Bosnia, but we don’t realize that the United States is the only one fighting wars these days because it is the only one allowed to do so (the U.S. government has explicitly stated that it will allow no country to rival it militarily). Likewise, many Americans talk about how their military defends the rights of people elsewhere in the world, but we don’t appreciate the animosity our armies and military bases create in places like South Korean and Saudi Arabia, where many people despise the presence of foreign soldiers on their land.
  
What makes people in other countries so upset is the assumption behind these policies: America knows what is best for the rest of the world. Some say that this assumption is at the heart of all patriotism. “Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate,” said Emma Goldman. “Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others.”
  
Some liberals argue that, properly understood, patriotism encourages dissent. In their view, patriotism is not about doing whatever the government tells you to do, but using your free speech to uphold the ideals of liberty and equality that America was founded upon. Clearly many anti-war protestors believe in this approach. It is surely better than patriotism-as-unquestioning-loyalty, but it is still flawed, Robert Jensen tells us. “Why are human characteristics being labeled as American,” he asks, “if there is nothing distinctly American about them? … At its worst, patriotism can lead easily to support for barbarism. At its best, it is self-indulgent and arrogant in its assumptions about the uniqueness of U.S. culture.”
  
Patriotism has served the United States well in making it a global power, and clearly it was necessary in the beginnings of the republic, to create unity out of a hodgepodge of former British subjects. But nowadays patriotism is past its prime. The United States is no longer a small republic on the shores of the Atlantic; it is the most multinational of nations. It is linked to the rest of the world economically (by the flow of import and export goods) and culturally (by the flow of immigrants, students, and workers). Today, to an ever-increasing extent, whatever helps the rest of the world helps the United States.
  
For this reason, world leaders like the Dalai Lama have called for an end to our old notions of nation vs. nation, “us” vs. “them.” In the past, when countries were independent of one another, “there was a relevance to violence and war,” the Dalai Lama writes. But today, “one-sided victory is no longer relevant. We must work to resolve conflicts in a spirit of reconciliation and always keep in mind the interests of others. We cannot destroy our neighbors! We cannot ignore their interests! Doing so would ultimately cause us to suffer.”
  
Perhaps it is time, then, to move beyond patriotism. Without losing our love for the people, places, and ideals of our unique country, we can begin to see ourselves as citizens of something larger than this. In places around the world, people are already making this journey: as Italians, Spaniards, and Germans increasingly see themselves as part of a unified Europe; as the number of individuals with multiple citizenships multiplies; as more people realize that in a world where everyone’s fates are tied together, love and loyalties can be shared.
  
Becoming a “citizen of the world” does not lessen the sacrifice of the men and women who have fought on behalf of the American flag, to defend American liberties. It extends the blessings of that liberty to new lands; it honors America’s heroes by honoring all of humanity, without prejudice or pettiness. And it preserves the nation, by preserving the world. “We must say goodbye to patriotism,” Jensen writes, “because the world cannot survive indefinitely the patriotism of Americans.”
  
My friend was tortured by his dislike of the pro-war protestors, because he truly wanted to do what was best for his country, the only country he has known. But there are many ways to serve one’s country, and in the end, what might save America is something other than patriotism–something more than patriotism.

Oddly enough, acting in ways that aren’t seen as patriotic may be the best way to help America out of its current international crisis. After all, part of the reason that terrorists are so willing to kill civilians is that they see them as representatives of their hated governments. Dissent reminds the rest of the world that not all Americans agree with the U.S. government’s foreign policy. It says that dislike of America should be directed at specific government policies, not at Americans themselves. It also improves the way that the American people are perceived elsewhere in the world, providing evidence that, yes, Americans are capable of critical thought and concern for the lives of people in other countries.
  
Ultimately, dissent may lead to something even more valuable: a new vision of American power. As the world’s only remaining superpower, America has the privilege to be a leader upon the global stage. Good leaders are not blinded by self-love, nor driven by self-interest. They identify with the group they lead. They see any loss on the part of the group as a loss to their own self. They lead with courage and strength, but also understanding and humility.
  
America’s future–and its future security–is tied to its ability to be that kind of leader. It will have to do a better job of showing other countries that it seeks what is best for the world, even at its own expense. It will need a new kind of patriotism–yes, a love for the people, land, and ideals of America, but an equally deep love and respect for other countries, too. Those who love America and want what is best for it will accept the great task, and the great responsibility, laid before it. Until Americans can accept criticism of their country’s actions abroad, until they can value the lives of Iraqis and Afghans as much as they do Americans, then there will be little hope of a more peaceful and just world.
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Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen