The American Century: Literature since 1945 529has become “the first universal nation.” Along with immigrants from the Hispanic
world, those from the third world generally have been changing the character and
destiny of the United States, especially after legislation in the 1960s first abolished
national-origin quotas (which tended to favor northern Europeans) and
then expanded immigration from countries such as China and India. Almost nine
million legal immigrants came to America during the 1980s, along with two million
undocumented immigrants. They accounted for 29 percent of the population
growth from 226.5 million to 248.7 million during the decade. From 1990 to 1997
another 7.5 million foreign-born individuals entered the United States legally,
accounting for 29.2 percent of the population. By the middle of the twenty-first
century, it has been calculated, “nonwhite” and third world ethnic groups will
outnumber whites in the United States. And the “average” American resident
will trace his or her ancestry to Asia, Africa, some part of the Hispanic world, the
Pacific Islands, Arabia – almost anywhere but white Europe. Revealing the central
dynamic of Western life, and in some sense global life, today, which is marked by the
powerful shaping force of shifting, multicultural populations, America has witnessed
the disappearance of the boundary between the “center” and the “margins.” And
with white Americans moving, it seems, inexorably into a minority, it has lost any
claim it may have had, or any pretence of one, to a Eurocentric character and an
exclusive destiny.
Not that everyone would agree. The attacks by al-Qaeda terrorists on September
11, 2001 left almost three thousand people dead, the World Trade Center in New York
City destroyed, and Americans rightly feeling that they were seriously threatened.
The American government, led by President George W. Bush, responded to this by
launching a “war on terror,” first invading Afghanistan, which had harbored
al-Qaeda terrorists, and then embarking on a lengthy diplomatic campaign to
associate Iraq with international terrorism. In particular, it was claimed that Iraq
possessed “weapons of mass destruction” that endangered the security of the United
States and its allies. The diplomatic campaign was followed by a military one, which
began on March 20, 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a multinational force led by
troops from the United States and the United Kingdom. The military operation was
swiftly finished, with the coalition declaring on April 15 that the invasion was
effectively over and, later, Bush making what became known as his “mission
accomplished” speech. What followed the operation, however, was continued chaos
and conflict. Saddam Hussein was certainly removed from power, his totalitarian
regime toppled. But the cost was high, with civil war and sustained acts of terrorism
leaving five thousand members of the coalition army and up to seven hundred
thousand Iraqis dead by the beginning of 2009. A vast majority of Americans and
the international community came to believe that the Iraq War was a mistake; most
intelligence experts agreed that it had only increased terrorism. The situation was
exacerbated by the failure to discover any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and
by a series of human rights abuses in coalition detention centers, including the now
notorious ones of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. If the mission of the war was
to bring peace and prosperity to Iraq, it certainly failed. If it was to demonstrate aGGray_c05.indd 529ray_c 05 .indd 529 8 8/1/2011 7:31:29 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 29 PM