Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
My company Cherry Tree publishes American values-based children’s books. One of our series, called Special Hops, focuses on a team of soldier rabbits that protect farmyard animals. These adorable-but-tough rabbits raised a few eyebrows. In one of the stories, Operation Rocky Freedom, we teach children the theme of encouraging worldwide democracy and helping the oppressed.
This illustrated kids book is indeed a positive allegory of the Iraq War, but it is so much more. It is meant to distill a core American value, that of freedom being a human right. In a post-isolationist America, foreign policy is no longer a Left versus Right issue. The official goals of the U.S. Department of State are, “to create a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community."
This speaks to not only the policies of the Bush administration at the beginning of the 21st century, but also the policies of Woodrow Wilson (a progressive Democrat) during World War I, and Abraham Lincoln (the first Republican) during the Civil War. In fact, these three presidents held the same (or very similar) views of the United States’ duty. In the Declaration of Independence, we sought to form a nation based on the premise that all men are created equal. Our foreign policy is based on this premise, that freedom is a human right (via our creator or via nature) and, therefore, the United States’ duty to protect that freedom.
This is indeed an abstract concept. That’s why we created soldier bunnies; to help children begin to grasp the principles this country stands for.
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Feb '11
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
Sounds like neo-(natal)-conservatism.
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
"Natal Conservatism"... I hope that isn't trademarked because we may start using it.
Apr '11
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
Thank you. I hope that in maybe five years time, I'll be able to bring my future children to Iraq to meet my ex-colleagues out there. It's a big deal that there's so little material out there to teach them about what their countrymen did out there; when they're older, they can enjoy playing Medal of Honor and learning about American heroism in Afghanistan, and maybe there'll be more Iraq stuff out by then, but for the moment we need more products like yours.
I don't mind if they don't join the military (indeed, there are definite upsides to that choice in one's children), but I won't consider myself a good parent if I don't get a sense that there's at least some longing in their hearts to be a part of the ultimate source of hope for the abused and unfree, the ultimate protection for the free but endangered.
Oct '10
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
Oh, please. When waking from dreams of righteous imposition by force of “the principles this country stands for” on people who couldn't care the least about said principles and despise the armed missionaries who seek to coerce them to conform, do you ever for a moment appreciate the suffering of the “soldier bunnies” who sign up out of idealism, a belief in your utopian delusions, or just in the hope of getting their college education paid for or learning a trade, and end up dead or disabled for life so that one dictator instead of another ends up in charge of an utterly inconsequential armpit of the world?
Aug '10
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
Soldier rabbits? It's been done.
(The Japanese word for rabbit is usagi, USA G.I.)
Apr '12
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
"The official goals of the U.S. Department of State are, 'to create a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community'."
Americans don't seem to realize that it these unrealistic, sanctimonious, utopian ideas that have made them so unpopular in the world. What arrogance to judge other people as not free, or in need of American "help". It appalls me that adults are teaching this dangerous rubbish to children, guaranteeing that ever more obnoxious "little helpers" will be unleashed on the world.
Jul '11
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
All my children have been taught that Woodrow Wilson and Barrack Obama are representatives of great evil and enemies to freedom. Our war for freedom is not vs some medieval sandbox dwellers but vs career politicians. I do enjoy books on family values though but I expect you'll get some very strong comments against interventionism. As Sgt Major Plumley said at Ia Drang as the NVA was over running them, " Prepare to defend yourself ".
Jul '10
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
Alainnah Robertson:
Americans don't seem to realize that it these unrealistic, sanctimonious, utopian ideas that have made them so unpopular in the world. What arrogance to judge other people as not free, or in need of American "help". It appalls me that adults are teaching this dangerous rubbish to children, guaranteeing that ever more obnoxious "little helpers" will be unleashed on the world.
There are plenty of legitimate critiques of Wilsonian interventionism, but it is hardly arrogance to note that people living in totalitarian dictatorships are not free. They aren't.
Edited on April 23, 2012 at 1:48amApr '12
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
How would Americans feel if China, an ancient, intelligent civilization, rushed over to North America declaring that the American form of government is all wrong and theirs is what must be adopted, the implication being that it is superior?
How would Americans feel if China declared in its Foreign Policy that they had to impose their form of government on the whole world for the good of China and the international community.
How would Americans feel if aliens arrived on American soil, declaring that the standard of living, even of the top 1%, is disgusting and had to be "improved" so that America became like the aliens home country?
How would Americans feel if kindly, well-meaning people from anywhere else on earth arrived in the States declaring that they had come to "help", even if they hadn't been invited?
Apr '12
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
Palaeologus:
"There are plenty of legitimate critiques of interventionism, but it is hardly arrogance to note that people living in totalitarian dictatorships are not free. They aren't."
Noting is one thing, thinking that this gives anyone the right to interfere in another country's way of doing things is quite another. We might see the dictatorship as lack of freedom, but the majority of citizens in that country might see it quite differently. Often the dictator brings control over the criminal element and allows the majority to live relatively peaceful lives.
There are always many ways of seeing a situation.
Sep '11
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
The reason America is a "post isolationist" country is because most people nowadays feel no obligation to fight in the wars that they support. If , through social mores, we obliged people to put their money where their mouths are, and fight in the wars that they support, we would probably become an isolationist country again. And that would probably be a good thing.
Edited on April 23, 2012 at 2:01amRe: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
And Mussolini made the trains run on time, Jane Fonda thought fondly of North Vietnam, Thomas Friedman envies the Chinese, and Barack Obama is channeling his inner Hugo Chavez. While I agree with you that our interventions abroad ought to be curtailed (and I would personally curtail them to reflect our security interests rather than any pie-in-the-sky delusions of universal harmony), I prefer an unflinching recognition of the conditions of human servitude over against the relativistic clouding of the difference between a country of free men, and one that enslaves. The people who risked their lives trying to cross the Iron Curtain understood the difference, and we do history a disservice when we turn a blind eye to what they emphatically lived, and died for.
Jul '10
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
Alainnah Robertson:
Noting is one thing, thinking that this gives anyone the right to interfere in another country's way of doing things is quite another.
There are always many ways of seeing a situation.
Yes, but some are necessarily wrong. If Saddam Hussein as dictator is a net positive for a given society, then those folks are in need of some soul searching.
No matter how folks try to re-invent the Iraq War, there are some simple truths:
I suppose we could have just run a "butcher and bolt" punitive operation. But I fail to see how that is morally superior. More sensible? Maybe.
Feb '11
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
Daniel Kessler, I appreciate what you are trying to do here, but speaking as a book lover, I cannot say that I like the look of your product. Tex the T-Rex is not going to be getting much play here at Toad Hall, not least because I am not in favor of e-books for children, but mostly because I can't stand cutesy anthropomorphic dinosaurs and their pink (?) "dogs". And also because I like teaching and learning history as history, not as allegory.
The reason I dislike e-books for children, although I occasionally assign texts to my students that are on my Kindle, is because education is a privilege, not stand-in entertainment. My children are all readers and love books, and the e- thing just distracts them.
Apr '11
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
Alainnah Robertson: "The official goals of the U.S. Department of State are, 'to create a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community'."
Americans don't seem to realize that it these unrealistic, sanctimonious, utopian ideas that have made them so unpopular in the world. What arrogance to judge other people as not free, or in need of American "help". It appalls me that adults are teaching this dangerous rubbish to children, guaranteeing that ever more obnoxious "little helpers" will be unleashed on the world. · 2 hours ago
The examples he gave were of World War I, the American Civil War, and Iraq. Even assuming you're ignorant of the evils of the Central Powers in the First World War, I would hope that you appreciate the benefit to the world of America ending it. While there are British, and French people who object, it is generally on the basis that America arrived too late, not that it arrived at all.
As a non-Southerner, I would guess that you don't object to the democratizing elements of the Civil War.
Apr '11
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
Alainnah Robertson:
Noting is one thing, thinking that this gives anyone the right to interfere in another country's way of doing things is quite another. We might see the dictatorship as lack of freedom, but the majority of citizens in that country might see it quite differently. Often the dictator brings control over the criminal element and allows the majority to live relatively peaceful lives.
There are always many ways of seeing a situation. · 1 hour ago
Having worked for the Iraqi government for a couple of years, I find it hard to imagine you believe that you're talking about Iraq, where Saddam most certainly did not keep the criminal element under control; by 2003, he'd ceded almost all control over Anbar to organized crime, for instance, and it often is hard to distinguish between legitimate and criminal forces in much of the late Saddamite state elsewhere. I can't think of where you might mean, though.
If you look at actual liberated countries (France, Czechoslovakia, Iraq, Japan, or South Korea, for instance), you'll often find strong elements of nostalgia, but you will not find majorities who prefer to live in terror and poverty.
Edited on April 23, 2012 at 3:21amApr '11
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
Alainnah Robertson: How would Americans feel if China, an ancient, intelligent civilization.... declar[ed] that the American form of government is all wrong and theirs is what must be adopted.....
How would Americans feel if China declared in its Foreign Policy that they had to impose their form of government.....
I don't know if you mean ancient Chinese civilization in the imperial sense; if so, the Chinese people who fled Imperial China for America do not appear to have widely held the view that imperial bureaucracy was a superior form of government, but America was certainly willing to hear similar arguments (see Hamilton, in particular, but Chinese rich California entertained Emperor Norton for a while). Chinese people in China made some violent noises about their preferred form of government during the Boxer rebellion, to a variety of responses in the American press.
If you mean Maoist government, then it's obviously not ancient. Still, Maoist movements, sometimes violent, have done existed in the US, so it's not a hypo. Likewise concrete is Chinese intervention in North Korea, India, Indo-China, Burma, Taiwan, Tibet, and Nepal. Americans object because Maoism is evil, not because it is different.
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
Mama Toad, I do agree that entertainment as a stand in for education is bad. However, I also believe that there is a huge opportunity to reach children in new ways. Like any technology, it can be used for good or for bad. In regards to talking dinosaurs... We're going to have to agree to disagree on that one; Tex is like a son to me.
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
Lots of interesting comments here, and I don't disagree with any one of them, necessarily. It is easy to paint U.S. foreign policy as sanctimonious. However, I think "James of England" gets it right; at the end of the day, the U.S. has a duty to ensure that governments around the world are founded under the premise that all people are free. That may be "better than thou" but it's important. Now, how we achieve that via diplomacy and foreign policy can be argued and we won't come to consensus here, but I believe that it's important for children to understand that the role the U.S. government and our military plays abroad is to give other children and other lands the same freedoms we enjoy here at home.
Apr '12
Re: Soldier Bunnies, Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy
Palaeologus - Dave Carter:
Of course, you are both correct that dictators are not a pretty sight, and that the States has to act in its own best interests. This is understandable.
What is not so understandable is why the States thinks it has the right to impose its values on other nations, without being asked.