Often criticized for ignoring our Latin American neighbors, President Obama had been looking forward to the Summit of the Americas as an opportunity to engage in diplomacy and talk up trade deals. Instead, the summit was all but hijacked by what the media is calling the greatest scandal to ever rock the Secret Service. By now you are probably familiar with the details of alleged wrongdoing by both Secret Service members and military personnel, so I won’t go into the sordid details here. Suffice to say that the Secret Service advance team showed questionable judgement and potentially exposed their team to the kinds of compromising situations that security professionals usually steer clear of.
I’ve done a fair bit of traveling abroad and always with the attitude that you respect your host country, respect their laws, their traditions and their culture and you do this to be a good ambassador for the U.S. and not a stereotype of the “ugly American.” That term has fallen out of currency and that’s a good thing. It’s a term that predates the 9/11 era (which provided a different lens by which to view America) and harkens back to a time when Americans abroad were often thought to be loud, brash, selfish and arrogant. Sadly, that’s exactly the picture painted by those implicated in this scandal. You can only imagine how this is playing in the local media. According to this Reuters report, a local commentator provided this telling quote: “Obama’s guards expelled in Colombia over prostitution – shame the gringos think that Latin America is a brothel and they act like it too.” In a part of the world where past U.S. actions still reverberate and the terms “gringos” and “Yankees” are used pejoratively, it’s a huge step backwards.
We can only hope that this scandal may provide a cautionary warning to those who travel abroad on behalf of their country and prompt them to think twice about how their actions reflect on the U.S. role in the world.
