From the Outside (November 2004) In 1984, my American family lived overseas for a year -- in England and France then India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Even to my teenage eyes, it was clear there wasn't much love lost between most of the world and my nation's then-president, Ronald Reagan. But just as clear in 1984 was that the world did not equate my country with my president -- in other words, Reagan ran the show, but America moved as it always had, sometimes stumbling but more right than wrong, more light than dark -- a place people died trying to escape to. When I came home I wondered why my friends and fellow-countrymen didn't seem to know how important America was to the world, what a beacon of hope we were to so many people -- from the streets of London to the slums of Delhi. Most Americans, it seemed to me in 1984, shrugged at the notion if they thought of it at all. Now, as an adult, I wonder why my fellow-countrymen don't seem to know or care how reviled we have become. That while "moral values" are erected and debated to death here at home, we have lost the moral high ground in the eyes of the world. We blindly worship our liberty, while overseas we peddle a freedom that has lost its backbone. We have more governments officially on our side than we did in 1984, but the people ruled by those governments look away and shake their heads. But Americans only ever see what they want to see. These days, I am somewhat bemused by the yellow ribbons on every car and every house. I feel I've earned that bemusement: when my army battalion deployed to Mogadishu in 1992 and then Port-au-Prince in 1994 the only ones who knew we were gone were our parents, the only ones waving the American flag were our wives. Tell the truth, Mr. and Mrs. Moral Value: did you wrap your Red State in a yellow ribbon when I was in Somalia? I didn't think so. And how I feel as a veteran about the current "support the troops" hysteria is similar, I think, to how a resident of New York or Washington DC feels about the millions of dollars now being poured into anti-terror measures in Wyoming and Montana. I fear for my country. Not from the enemy outside, but the madness within. As a nation, we are not so much divided red states/blue states or moral/not moral...instead, I think we are scared. And a nation scared is a nation that begins to turn on itself. We as Americans are truly in the wilderness now, wandering lost while we yell and wave our banners and insist we know exactly who we are. One thing I know for certain because I saw it: the rest of the world used to know who we were. As a boy in Europe and India, what I saw was that most foreigners had a better, more passionate idea of what it meant to be an American than most of the Americans I knew. What I fear now is that this still holds true today.