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Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Ben on April 30, 2005, 01:09:37 PM

Title: "On Being Disliked" - America Haters
Post by: Ben on April 30, 2005, 01:09:37 PM

Thought this was a great article, especially the last paragraph.

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http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200504290803.asp


On Being Disliked
The new not-so-unwelcome anti-Americanism.

Last year the hysteria about the hostility toward the United States reached a fevered pitch. Everyone from Jimmy Carter to our Hollywood elite lamented that America had lost its old popularity. It was a constant promise of the Kerry campaign to restore our good name and "to work with our allies." The more sensitive were going to undo the supposed damage of the last four years. Whole books have been devoted to this peculiar new anti-Americanism, but few have asked whether or not such suspicion of the United States is, in fact, a barometer of what we are doing right  and while not necessarily welcome, at least proof that we are on the correct track.

     
The Egyptian autocracy may have received $57 billion in aggregate American aid over the last three decades. But that largess still does not prevent the Mubarak dynasty from damning indigenous democratic reformers by dubbing them American stooges. In differing ways, the Saudi royal family exhibits about the same level of antagonism toward the U.S. as do the Islamic fascists of al Qaeda  both deeply terrified by what is going on in Iraq. Mostly this animus arises because we are distancing ourselves from corrupt grandees, even as we have become despised as incendiary democratizers by the Islamists. Is that risky and dangerous? Yes. Bad? Hardly

At the U.N. it is said that a ruling hierarchy mistrusts the United States and that a culture of anti-Americanism has become endemic within the organization. No wonder  the Americans alone push for more facts about the Oil-for-Food scandal, question Kofi Annan's breaches of ethics, and want investigations about U.N. crimes in Africa. If we are mistrusted for caring about those thousands who are inhumanely treated by a supposedly humane organization, then why in the world should we wish to be liked by such a group?

EU bureaucrats and French politicians routinely caricature Americans, whipping up public opinion against the United States, even as they fly here to profess eagerness to maintain the old NATO transatlantic ties. Is it to our discredit that what Europe has now devolved into does not like the United States?

Mexico, we are told, is furious at the United States. Mexico City newspapers routinely trash Americans. Vicente Fox usually sounds more like a belligerent than the occasional visitor at the presidential ranch. That is not so bad either.

In short, who exactly does not like the United States and why? First, almost all the 20 or so illiberal Arab governments that used to count on American realpolitik's giving them a pass on accounting for their crimes. They fear not the realist Europeans, nor the resource-mad Chinese, nor the old brutal Russians, but the Americans, who alone are prodding them to open their economies and democratize their corrupt political cultures. We must learn to expect, not lament, their hostility, and begin to worry that things would be indeed wrong if such unelected dictators praised the United States.

The United Nations has sadly become a creepy organization. Its General Assembly is full of cutthroat regimes. The Human Rights Commission has had members like Vietnam and Sudan, regimes that at recess must fight over bragging rights to which of the two killed more of their own people. The U.N. has a singular propensity to find flawed men to be secretary-general  a Kurt Waldheim, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, or Kofi Annan. Blue-helmeted peace-keepers, we learn, are as likely to commit as prevent crimes; and the only thing constant about such troops is that they will never go first into harm's way in Serbia, Kosovo, the Congo, or Dafur to stop genocide. Even worse, the U.N. has proved to be a terrible bully, an unforgivable sin for a self-proclaimed protector of the weak and innocent  loud false charges against Israel for its presence in the West Bank, not a peep about China in Tibet; tough talk about Palestinian rights, far less about offending Arabs over Darfur. So U.N. anti-Americanism is a glowing radiation badge, proof of exposure to toxicity.

The EU is well past being merely silly, as its vast complex of bureaucrats tries to control what 400 million speak, eat, and think. Its biggest concerns are three: figuring out how its nations are to keep paying billions of euros to retirees, unemployed, and assorted other entitlement recipients; how to continue to ankle-bite the United States without antagonizing it to the degree that these utopians might have to pay for their own security; and how not to depopulate itself out of existence. Europeans sold Saddam terrible arms for oil well after the first Gulf War. Democratic Israel or Taiwan means nothing to them; indeed, democracy is increasingly becoming the barometer by which to judge European hostility. Cuba, China, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah  not all that bad; the United States, Taiwan, and Israel, not all that good. Personally, I'd rather live in a country that goes into an anguished national debate over pulling the plug on a lone woman than one that blissfully vacations on the beach oblivious to 15,000 elderly cooked to well done back in Paris.

Mexico, enjoying one of the richest landscapes in the world, can't feed its own people, so it exports its poorest to the United States. Its own borders with Central America are as brutal to cross as our own are porous. Illegal aliens send back almost $50 billion, which has the effect of propping up corrupt institutions that as a result will never change. Given its treatment of its own people, if the Mexican government praised the United States we should indeed be concerned.

Who then are America's friends? Perhaps one billion Indians, who appreciated that at a time of recession we kept our economy open, and exported jobs and expertise there that helped evolve its economy.

Millions of Japanese trust America as well. Unlike the Chinese, who on script vandalized Japanese interests abroad in anguish over right-wing Japanese textbooks, Americans  who at great cost once freed China  without such violence urge the Japanese to deal honestly with the past. After all, the Tokyo government that started the war is gone and replaced by a democracy; in contrast, the Communist dictatorship that killed 50 million of its own and many of its neighbors is still in place in China. At a time when no one in Europe seems to care that Japan is squeezed between a nuclear North Korea and a nuclear China, the United States alone proves a reliable friend. The French, on spec, conduct maneuvers with the ascendant Communist Chinese navy.

Eastern Europeans do not find the larger families, religiosity, or commitment to individualism and freedom in America disturbing. Apparently, millions in South America don't either  if their eagerness to emigrate here is any indication.

It is the wage of the superpower to be envied. Others weaker vie for its influence and attention  often when successful embarrassed by the necessary obsequiousness, when ignored equally shamed at the resulting public impotence. The Cold War is gone and former friends and neutrals no longer constrain their anti-American rhetoric in fear of a cutthroat and nuclear Soviet Union. Americans are caricatured as cocky and insular  as their popular culture sweeps the globe.

All that being said, the disdain that European utopians, Arab dictatorships, the United Nations, and Mexico exhibit toward the United States is not  as the Kerry campaign alleged in the last election  cause for tears, but often reason to be proud, since much of the invective arises from the growing American insistence on principles abroad.

America should not gratuitously welcome such dislike; but we should not apologize for it either. Sometimes the caliber of a nation is found not in why it is liked, but rather in why it is not. By January 1, 1941, I suppose a majority on the planet  the Soviet Union, all of Eastern Europe, France, Italy, Spain, and even many elsewhere in occupied Europe, most of Latin America, Japan and its Asian empire, the entire Arab world, many in India  would have professed a marked preference for Hitler's Germany over Churchill's England.

Think about it. When Europe orders all American troops out; when Japan claims our textbooks whitewash the Japanese forced internment or Hiroshima; when China cites unfair trade with the United States; when South Korea says get the hell off our DMZ; when India complains that we are dumping outsourced jobs on them; when Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians refuse cash aid; when Canada complains that we are not carrying our weight in collective North American defense; when the United Nations moves to Damascus; when the Arab Street seethes that we are pushing theocrats and autocrats down its throat; when Mexico builds a fence to keep us out; when Latin America proclaims a boycott of the culturally imperialistic Major Leagues; and when the world ignores American books, films, and popular culture, then perhaps we should be worried. But something tells me none of that is going to happen in this lifetime.

 Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His website is victorhanson.com.

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Title: "On Being Disliked" - America Haters
Post by: XLMiguel on April 30, 2005, 02:20:03 PM

Leadership can be a lonely position.

When I compare what we (USA) have accomplished in the world to what the haters have done, I place their scorn right up there with all the significance of a firefly fart in a hurricane.  When they can name one onther country that has given more to the world while creating more wealth and quality of life for more people (citizens and otherwise), maybe I'll give a flying forniciferous leap at a rolling pastry, but just as you are judged by the company you keep, you are also judged by the "quality" of your enemies.  Fie and begorrah on the terdballs.
(And after I have a few more beers I'll be back totell you how I really feel. . . . .)
Kidding - why sour a good buzz

Title: "On Being Disliked" - America Haters
Post by: Standing Wolf on April 30, 2005, 05:23:30 PM

Quote

Everyone from Jimmy Carter to our Hollywood elite lamented that America had lost its old popularity. It was a constant promise of the Kerry campaign to restore our good name and "to work with our allies." The more sensitive were going to undo the supposed damage of the last four years.

Our home-grown leftist extremists, like socialist parasites the world over, want to bring America down to the level of the other dictatorships, banana republics, oligarchies, theocracies, people's republics, and Zimbabwe. Given half a chance, they'd gladly turn the United States into a larger, slightly more prosperous East Germany.

Hanson's essays are often depressing as @#$%^&, but always worth reading: he invariably takes the longsometimes very longview of things, and puts events in their proper historical perspective. There should be many more such writers working today.

Title: "On Being Disliked" - America Haters
Post by: Cool Hand Luke 22:36 on April 30, 2005, 07:07:24 PM

A good essay overall, but this passage makes absolutely no sense:

Quote

By January 1, 1941, I suppose a majority on the planet  the Soviet Union, all of Eastern Europe, France, Italy, Spain, and even many elsewhere in occupied Europe, most of Latin America, Japan and its Asian empire, the entire Arab world, many in India  would have professed a marked preference for Hitler's Germany over Churchill's England.

Is the author saying that Poland, Czecheslovakia, etc. actually preferred to be overrun by the Nazi Germans?

Title: "On Being Disliked" - America Haters
Post by: Anna G. on May 01, 2005, 03:06:29 PM

What exactly is this person talking about? Nations or governments? If "they" (France, Britain or whoever) are the governments, then everyone should know that governments feel no emotion towards each other and there is absolutely no place for "like" and "dislike" in such context. And if "they" are the people that the nation is consisted of, then it is a complete nonsense to paint a whole nation with a wide brush. Of course there will always be a large amount of not so intelligent people with a bit too strong herding instinct who take politics into their personal lives and would dislike someone just because of their nationality, but we all have the fair share of them. This is the exact reason why I don't like it when people think about their nation as "we" and about others as "them": taking people as individuals seem smarter.

Title: "On Being Disliked" - America Haters
Post by: Ron on May 01, 2005, 03:58:45 PM

Ever heard the saying "love is as love does"

I say a nation is as a nation does.

You as a nation stand against our policies,  you are against us.

Case in point France,  many in France think nicely of America,  their government stands in opposition to us on a regular basis.

How about Iran?  They have pro America rallies in the streets but the government is our enemy.  Irans government is our enemy  and when it comes to dealing with them on the world stage that is all that counts.

Title: "On Being Disliked" - America Haters
Post by: grampster on May 01, 2005, 06:01:36 PM

"Why can't we all just get along?".  Famous words uttered by an infamous person.  Yet this is the mantra of the left.  But in order to get along, I suspect we would have to find some reduced level of civilization.  Reduced to its lowest common denominator.    It could not be any other way, actually.  One cannot wave a magic wand and elevate cultures.  One could do the opposite quite easily, however.  And rapidly as well.

That is why the Left is so simplistic and wrong.  They envision a sort of human existance of peace, joy and equality.   I think the slogan was used before..."from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".  A fantasy world that history has already seen.  Actually what they would get is chaos, starvation, disease and oppression.  Idealism works on paper, but does not fare well in the real world.

I'll take what we have now, imperfect as it is.

Title: "On Being Disliked" - America Haters
Post by: jefnvk on May 01, 2005, 07:12:57 PM

Jeff Gordon, in an interview, once said something along the lines of 'the more they boo me, the better I am usually doing.  I like hearing boo's'.

I think the same thing is here.  They envy us, or at least realize that to opressed peoples, and free, hard-working peoples, America is the shining light in the dead of night.  Britain and France are not the powers that they were even half a century ago.  America, however, is the lone superpower.  America is what they were around the turn of the century.  The center of the world.  The center of the arts, and industry, and trade, and globalism.  No longer are European powers that way, America has taken their place.

I say, let them put us down all they want.  The more complaining I hear from them, the better off we are probably doing.