No, Daniel, you are not overly concerned about this, but there's very little that can be done. Power of the kind the US has now is the flame that attracts all kinds of hate, envy and anger. Yes, of course, attemtpts can be made to placate the unhappy and the bitter, but there's no cure for the disease.

I live in Germany and the amount of attention paid by the mass media to the US is astonishing. It's mostly very critical coverage and it seems to act as a safety valve for expressing German rage and angst about the country's problems and failures. Regardless of who is in the White House, this will not change because Germany will not change. It's filled with pain about its past and filled with fear about its future. Criticizing the US is preferred to dealing with reality.

So, Daniel, anti-Americanism is something you will have to live with for the rest of your life. Still, it's better to be powerful than powerless.

Yes, Daniel, you are overly concerned about this, but there's very little that can be done outside of the two countries that we invaded.

I suspect that once they start becoming more moderate, wealthy and free, they other nations of the region are going to have to come up with some regional linguistic version of the epitath "Uncle Tom".

Yes I think it's a concern, but I'm not sure there's anything to be done about it. Even though I think the Bush Admin has had some blunders, I doubt seriously a Kerry Admin would have done much different. Other than of course give up our entire sovereignty to the UN...
We are not perfect as a counry (which one is?), and we've made mistakes, but in the end it's more about who we are than what we do. No matter what the blithering idiots on the Left may whine.

The fact is that certain radical clerics will use any excuse -- and it is impossible to eliminate all excuses -- to incite the masses, especially where they have an opportunity to embarrass the Afhan and Pakistani governments (which may well be their main target)! So, it is not Bush's policy (unless you mean his interest in promoting democracy in the Middle East, which is clearly something these radical clerics oppose, and will oppose to their deaths) that is to blame for the rioting. Newsweek's "sin" was its poor journalistic practices which (in a time of war) allowed this nation's sworn enemies to use Newsweek's credibility as a respected news source to inflame those passions. Should Newsweek be subject to ridicule for that failing? You betcha!

I think its worth pointing out that there is a kind of myopic dismissiveness inherent in a lot of the rampant lack of concern for America's image abroad. During the cold war, America was remarkable well-regarded by many in Eastern Europe suffering under Communist rule. Out of mid-century liberalism came an entire intellectual class whose ideas of freedom and liberty were deeply appealing internationally. American culture in the form of rock n' roll and hollywood proved equally seductive, and the United States' victory over Communism was achieved in the geo-political realm, but perhaps most importantly in the arena of ideas and culture.

I am of the opinion that we are in a generational battle against Islamic fundamentalism, and we have to fight the war on multiple fronts. Serious people should be concerned about how America is viewed, because the strength of America has always been in our power to spread infectious ideas and values. America's economic and military preeminance is safe for the foreseeable future, but by no means permenant. The more we encourage societies throughout the world to emulate the basic foundations of American institutional liberalism, the better our future will be.

It feels empowering to be so quickly dismissive of the opinions of those we label "powerless", but the world we have to navigate proves more difficult the greater the anti-american sentiment. Personally, I want the disenfranchized in oppressive Middle Eastern regimes to feel the same pull to American ideals as the Czech intellectuals of the 1960s. To the extent that American political policy makes our ideals less receptive, we are losing that battle.

If we invade Syria, this problem will surely go away.

No, I don't think you're wrong to be concerned.

Except that I don't think that it has much to do with Bush or our policies. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Muslim world is loony. (Isn't that the technical term used by you IR types?) Abu Ghraib surely didn't help, but even on 9/12/01, when sympathy for the U.S. was at its highest, there'd have been plenty of Muslims willing to believe this. (We're talking about people who still go around talking about Jews making matzoh from gentile blood. They actually believe this stuff.)

Also it is interesting that the reaction was only in a couple of Islamic countries. (That Arab street never really lives up to its billing, does it?)

I agree with Dan. The veracity of the Newsweek report was irrelevant. If the story had not existed, another reason would have been found for an expression of rage. I find that some other posters remarks are the ussual view from inside the american bubble. "If only they were more like us they would be happy." This is exactly what enfuriates the rest of the world; a tendency to stop addressing the other side in common terms of understanding and simply insisting that the discussion be on american terms. Of course the other side balks and then we call them immoral, or backward or whatever the current pejorative is.

The unfortunate aspect of anti-Americanism is that we can never really know the consequences. Negative public sentiment overseas will likely have little influence on the big questions of US national security and national interest. We can act to defend our interests. We can persuade. With the biggest stack of chips, we can control the table.

But the success of America in the long term depends not only on prevailing on the big decisions, but on also coming out ahead on the myriad little decisions and transactions that characterize our interaction with the rest of the world. What is the effect of anti-American sentiment on particular business decisions to source American services or products? What is the effect of anti-Americanism on the family of an exceptionally bright Indonesian who are debating sending their child to university in the United States or Australia? What is the effect of anti-Americanism on a single individual's decision to commit a terrorist act or fund terrorist acts?

To not be concerned about anti-Americanism is foolish. Death by a thousand cuts, indeed.

If follows that an administration that is overtly more sensitive to anti-Americanism and puts stock in the little symbolic acts to ameliorate negative attitudes overseas would be qualitatively more effective and successful than an Administration that would not only discount the importance of anti-Americanism, but then also show little aptitude for managing tiny details.

We've held pretty significant power for quite some time now, but the current level of hatred toward us is more recent.

While I'm sure it's partly due to the fact that it's easier to hate us than deal with their own repressive govt's, it's also due to the overbearing methods we use to wield that power.

(Mike - your tossed that "Kerry Admin would do no better" line out there pretty fast, as though it actually had something to do with the discussion.)

I hold that American values and American principles haven't changed one iota, nor has American "culture", to any significant degree in a very long time. We had thought it would be business as usual until 9/11.

What has changed are the ever more shrill and deadly voices of the internationalist Left, the judicial incursions into legislation, the quick-trigger, biased MSM in this country, and the tribal, death-to-the-infidel yells from Muslims in Europe and elsewhere.

This combination is irresistable candy for the depressed, the oppressed, and the delusional socialist regimes of the world. Bashing America has become a sport even in this country.

Frustrating, but these irreligious and hatefilled voices are not possible to silence here, if we want to keep our freedoms. If only "they", all of the theys, would realize that their words do cost lives that needn't be lost.

Also it is interesting that the reaction was only in a couple of Islamic countries. (That Arab street never really lives up to its billing, does it?)

I suspect this was because of 2 factors
-- Both Pakistan and Afghanistan do allow independent demonstrations and marches in a way that many Arab countries do not. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are generally quick to clamp down on demonstrations of any kind
-- Pakistan at least has independent parties. Large demonstrations require organizational strength, which is difficult in say Egypt. (Muslim Brotherhood demonstrations in Egypt recently have more police than protesters).
-- Serendipity: It just so happened that cricketer Imran Khan happened so seize on this topic, which gave it great publicitly in Pakistan.

And to think I used to be a fan of Imran Khan.

What has changed are the ever more shrill and deadly voices of the internationalist Left, the judicial incursions into legislation, the quick-trigger, biased MSM in this country, and the tribal, death-to-the-infidel yells from Muslims in Europe and elsewhere.

Just curious, but what on earth do 'judicial incursions into legislation' have to do with America's image abroad ? And why on earth would this be higher today than they were under say the Warren Court ? And incidentally. the internationalist left has also gotten weaker in recent years as countries turn away from socialism in their economic policies.

I should also point out that a lot of people outside the US don't get their news from US media, so hashing the MSM is also somewhat counter-productive.

But to return to Dan's question: I don't think we should be concerned with Afghanistan in particular. I also think the so-called threat of an Islamist take over in Pakistan is exaggerated, largely by the likes of Musharaff. Also, riots are not uncommon in South Asia -- I grew up there, believe me I know.

Dan,
I think you are very right to be concerned & I think it leads back to why Torture & so many agreements on how to act in war exist.
As I see it primarily because after a war there is peace & the more atrocities that occur in war the longer & tougher that peace takes too occur ( and to be cynical the more money it costs to wage war ).
It has surprised me the lack of foresight that this White House has had regarding the ramifications of such issues, I would have thought Rumsfeld especially would have had more understanding of why these conventions exist.
I was interested by the first comment on MSM media coverage of the US in Germany, I live in New Zealand & to be honest I doubt I have ever seen less US coverage.
Nigel

Why do you assume for the sake of argument that no Koran was ever flushed down the toilet when we know from numerous sources that such insults to Islam were regular occurrences? And why are those regular occurrences even important when we know that the torture and murder of prisoners were regular occurrences? More than 100 prisoners have died in U.S. custody and you can be sure that it wasn't from natural causes. So let's stop kidding ourselves. Just as Osama bin Laden's terrorism helped bring on Bush's, Bush's terrorism will help bring on more from Muslims. One side had better stop it. The fault lies with Congress for not impeaching Bush. We have to face that we have a war criminal running the nation.

Our enemies get excited about a Koran, but no one gets too excited when Muslims repress and butcher Christians.

We will be hated and envied by both the European securlarists and the Muslim extremists until they need our money or our protection. This is nothing new, and nothing to get overly excited about.

It is a reason to keep a strong military and to kill those who need killing.

We will be hated and envied by both the European securlarists and the Muslim extremists until they need our money or our protection. This is nothing new, and nothing to get overly excited about.

It is a reason to keep a strong military and to kill those who need killing.

Ain't nothin' more Christian than a good killin' after all...

The problem is not that radical Islamists reacted predictably to an inflamatory report* but that the report was believable. The White House and its allies properly attacked the account's veracity. However, they could nothing about its believability. The actions of the Bush Administration have erased the line between the plausible and the implausible. If persons of goodwill existed in the Administratoin, they would set to work on reestablishing that line so that when a "Koran in the toilet" story emerges, the first reaction is, "That cannot be true."

*Unlike the Bible, which the devout believe is the will of God revealed through the prophets and the evangelists, the Koran is the very word of God.

Er, credulity and ignorance on the part of third-worlders is certainly not anything that started being a problem during the Bush Administration. Back during the cold war, there were occasional riots out in the hinterlands of Africa and South America where the cause was rumors that Americans were up to something grotesque- like using orphans adopted by families in the US for organ transplants. You might think they're urban legends, and in the sense that they never happened, you're right- but the riots caused by the rumors are real.

Sometimes it seems like the best thing we could do would be to print out the snopes.com website and hand it out to everyone on the planet.

I want to draw attention to this sentence of Applebaum's:

And it was plausible precisely because interrogation techniques designed to be offensive to Muslims were used in Iraq and Guantanamo, as administration and military officials have also confirmed.

What we have here is not a situation where we have good policy reasons for, say, smearing putative menstrual blood on people, and the fact that it's offensive is a sad accident; the whole point is to horrify the prisoners, on their own terms. And -- to the extent that the motivation for it is not simply vicious-mindedness, which I think it mostly is -- it's considered a benefit of this kind of thing that word gets out to the general population: "You don't want to mess with the Yanks, they'll smear you." So the fact (if true!) that a too-efficient dissemination of this information causes riots isn't out of the blue; it's the effect of a policy that, in one respect only, was just a few percent more effective than planned.

Or, shorter me: Wind, whirlwind, dragon's teeth, dragons.

Anti-Americanism should be split up into dislike and hatred against the US in some parts of the World.

There is a lot of arm chair dislike of the US from most of the rest of world. This is more jealousy and results from a lack of familiarity with the US. America tends to export a lot of crap, crass culture while not exporting all the great stuff the US makes. Star Wars is what people think of as American culture rather than the New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic Monthly, NPR etc. But Britons are not going to start riots against the American Embassy because of Paris Hilton's latest stupidities. Also, America's political power means that it gets a bit of resentment for most decisions.

The only worry about the this kind of anti-Americanism is that with the invasion of Iraq most of the world really suspects the US of becoming dangerous despots which harnesses these feelings. But with the disaster that the invasion has become and the fact that it looks like a new Vietnam it may be that the US will think twice before invading another country which will reduce this feeling.

Then there is anti-Americanism hatred like that in many muslim countries, Cuba, Vietnam and other places where US policies has really harmed people.
The US may have started violence in those countries for a good cause, i.e. in Afghanistan stirring up the place to confront the Soviet Union. But if the US destroyed your country you don't care about the cause.

That is serious and should be minimized. But it's a choice. If the US chooses to invade and occupy places and back Israel regardless of it's actions and continue the boycott against Cuba then that is what will happen. But it may be that these goals matter more to the US than occasional terrorist attacks. Realistically, unless a terrorist group gets a hold of a nuclear weapon the cost to the US is not that great.

Bundling anti-American dislike and anti-American hatred into the same thing is disingenuous.

Yes, be concerned.
I'm here in Manila, visiting. I think Americans are sheltered from the real world. I think we are not getting media and news we deserve. Here, I am watching BBC and CNN Asia version and the quality is awesome.
We deserve quality world news. We Americans need to be in tune with the world and not so self centered. This will help.
I think we are to blame. We need to respect other cultures.

You are not overly concerned. And it doesn't help that it's another sign of the White House's attention deficit on this issue. Wasn't Karen Hughes nominated with much fanfare to the public diplomacy position for the Islamic world, like 2 months ago? But where is she? Sitting in Texas for another 6 months while her job gets even more difficult.

Anti-Americanism is on the rise, true, but there's a catch: not as much as it looks like for an American. Truth is, it's been pretty goddamn high for decades now. There's little that can be done besides allowing for half the planet to mature past the collective age of 13.

"I think we are to blame. "
I can see why you would think that, watching the BBC and all...;)

Yea, northing is our fault. We're practically perfect in every way.

The fact the protests only happened in 2 countries is a perfect example of how Islam is used political purposes. If Mubarak, Asad and pals in the ME thought it would be helpful to them then there would have been "outrage" in Egypt, Syria etc.

Hate the US is becoming more popular because as Lefty government policy fails in Europe or various dictatorships hold on power starts to crumble, instead of looking in the mirror it's easier to blame the US. And don't forget the #2 thing to blame your countries problems is Jews (#1 in some areas of the world.)

I think its worth pointing out that there is a kind of myopic dismissiveness inherent in a lot of the rampant lack of concern for America's image abroad. During the cold war, America was remarkable well-regarded by many in Eastern Europe suffering under Communist rule.

...yeah, but there were still massive protests in western Europe when American Presidents came over to visit. America has never been universally liked, and it won't be until alien invaders show up and the rest of the planet will look to us to protect them- and even then, I expect the warm fuzzy feeling will last about 6 weeks. Then, back to business as usual.

Out of mid-century liberalism came an entire intellectual class whose ideas of freedom and liberty were deeply appealing internationally.

That's not it. Back in the middle of the century, there was a big brutal, ruthless, MAD-capable superpower called the Soviet Union. America was the alternative.

Now, the Soviet Union is history, and the United States doesn't have a big, brutal, ruthless, MAD-capable superpower to look not so bad in comparison with. Instead, we look big and scary in comparison with a bunch of middlewight nations- and to be fair, the US *is* big and scary in comparison. But short of toning ourselves down to their level (not going to happen), there isn't much we can do about this- despite all the rhetoric, other governments (save China) show no sign of being willing (EU) or able (Russia) to make themselves into a superpower.... and until there's another superpower for America to not look so bad in comparison with, we're going to be big and scary.

Also it is interesting that the reaction was only in a couple of Islamic countries. (That Arab street never really lives up to its billing, does it?)

Indeed.... and it should be remembered that Afghanistan and Pakistan aren't Arab countries. Muslim != Arab.

To erg:
Regarding judicial activism: I wonder how Roe vs Wade and the conflict in the US over abortion plays in Arab lands. Seems to me that voices from the Bench have the impact of a fatwa on Muslims. To our detriment, in fact, either way it plays.

Regarding the MSM, it is exceedingly difficult to deny, I believe, that stories from the US media that are unfavorable to the US itself, or to the government, get excellent play in foreign lands, especially in the Islamic countries.

Hence these sources of US calamity add to the already preconditioned Muslim mind to hate the US. Perhaps other nations and peoples accept these heavily biased offerings from the media at face value also, and again add to the hate quotient, even when proven untrue.

Polio is making a comeback in Africa and East Asia because some Muslim clerics are spreading the rumor that the vaccine is an American plot to sterilize Muslim men (to be fair other clerics are trying to counter this).

So what kind of diplomacy will counter that kind of ignorance and/or treachery? None I know of.

Our enemies are going to hate us, regardless......

What bothers me is that it was too damn easy for the clerics to whip up anti-American sentiment.

i dunno, maybe it's because of the documented torture of prisoners they're so exercised about?

"Let me put this more bluntly: assume that the Newsweek goof was of the maximal variety -- i.e., despite Gitmo prisoner claims, it turns out that no Qu'ran was ever flushed down any toilet." Dan Drezner

Apparently not far enough, not blunt enough. Not only has Newsweek retracted their story, due to their source apparently recanting or at least dissimulating, but there were, according to two reports I read yesterday (cannot presently find them) positive confirmations that Guantanamo prisoners themselves stopped up toilets with copies of Qu'rans, as a form of protest and sabotage. Yet, there was no outrage concerning those reports; and, if I recall correctly, there were multiple occurrances of this confirmed.

David Brooks has something of a point, certainly. But for one it's not an either/or situation. Muslims believe the Qu'ran to be directly inspired by Allah and single sourced to Mohammad, every word, direct from Allah to the Prophet. News-Tweak editors and Isikoff certainly know this, or they should, so it's not as if they were clueless. (Imagine, if you will, the administration disseminating this type of report, instead of Isikoff/Newsweek, and tell me we'd be looking to in any direction other than the administration for blame.)

Still further, it's nice to see Brooks call things to order and point out the root causes, or at least the primary culprits, are the fanatics and Islamofascists themselves. To this point I would have thought, via a variety of "root cause," usual suspect narratives, that such was not the case. But now that Isikoff and News-Tweak need to be defended, even the NYT now realizes where the real blame belongs. Refreshing and profound insights, coincident with the need to defend Isikoff and Newsweek.

None of this means we shouldn't absolutely minimize giving the Arab/Muslim world cause for resentments, but with Protocols of the Elders and similar fantasist imaginings serving to incite blood libels, hatreds, etc., rounding up the usual suspects to make the affective and harder Left, who have exhibited their own history of fantasist propaganda, feel better about their diagnostic abilities is not likely to produce fruitful results.

(Also, more broadly across this same theme, that the Left - whether the soft, affective left or the harder Left - is concerned about "anti-Americanism" per se, when they've done so much to foment it, along with its inverse, i.e., apologize for or minimize the crimes associated with various Leninist/Stalinist and Maoist regimes, is profoundly suspect. Once they begin to forward broader narratives, include some overdue mea culpa's within those narratives, they will begin to be much more believable.)

In at least two of these issues, the answer is not either/or but both.

The U.S. record in Abu Graib and other facilities is terrible and the accounts from the people who have been released (ie. the least guilty) is extremely harmful to the US image and objectives in the Muslim world. However, Newsweek commited a equally terrible journalistic blunder and should be harsely criticized for it (or more importantly should lose credibility and hence revenue).

Anti-Americanism has many causes, some right and some wrong. I don't doubt it is fueled by Europeans, Arabs and the American left. But Bush's hamfisted approach has needlessly made it much worse.

All of this hurts the U.S. in the world, makes our policies harder to implement and leads, directly or indirectly, to deaths n the world.

If a high school teacher is trying to reach her students, she considers their state of mind, their maturity, their level of education thus far and so on. She is condescending to them because she is the adult; the teacher. They are the kids, fraught with the tumult of a developing human being.

This is an exact analogy of the mindset that says we have to figure out why “they” hate “us.” It is condescending in the extreme to a very large proportion of the world’s population and creates more problems than it solves.

Who are we to sit back and say “Poor Muslim people, they can’t help it that their leaders are putting them in a position to do such things. It’s our responsibility to be above them and figure out how not to offend them or their leaders.”?

As for Newsweek; they couldn’t be more wrong. It was unethical, unprofessional and simply dishonest of them to report such flimsy allegations as fact. To gloss over such malicious reporting by saying that we’re offending them anyway so let’s just get over it is screamingly dishonest as well.

And besides, there was a great deal of anti-Americanism before the war on terror. Reading the posts and comments around here, one would think that before the Bush administration, the Arab countries were our closest allies.

Jack,

Yes, where the U.S. is guilty, they need to change course, on the other hand perpetually holding up a standard of perfection to the administration while expecting absolutely nothing from the Isikoff's and News-Tweak's of the world beyond their own profound self-regard, not to mention the salafists and fanaticism in the Muslim world, isn't going to cut it.

Also, John Rosenthal of Transatlantic Intelligencer has a post from late last year entitled The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy that is still fresh and much to this point Ray made.

i dunno, maybe it's because of the documented torture of prisoners they're so exercised about?

If so, why don't they flip out when governments in predominately muslim countries do it? If something only causes outrage when the Americans do it, why do you expect me to accept that it's the thing that's causing the outrage, instead of the who?

.....

(Also, more broadly across this same theme, that the Left - whether the soft, affective left or the harder Left - is concerned about "anti-Americanism" per se, when they've done so much to foment it, along with its inverse, i.e., apologize for or minimize the crimes associated with various Leninist/Stalinist and Maoist regimes, is profoundly suspect. [...]

What he said.

A certain amount of anti-Americanism is inevitable, given what we are and our role in the international system. On the other hand, increasing levels of anti-Americanism operate like sand in the gears, making everything we want to do more difficult.

The question is about the level. The second question is whether our government does things to raise the level. Does it gain more in outcome, over whatever time frame, than it loses in increasing friction? Or is it doing things that produce no appreciable gains, at the cost of considerable friction?

Doug, of course the US does things that provoke anti-Americanism.

This debate is like debating in 1970 why South East Asia seemed to be running amock with anti-Americanism and somehow saying that protests in Europe were part of the same movement.

If Muslim people are so anti-American why was there no anti-American violence before say, about 1965 or whenever and why has it accelerated since about 1991? Doesn't this make you think that US actions may contribute? Doesn't it make you realise that if the US stations troops in the region, invades Muslim nations and backs Israel one sidedly (which may not be the view in the US but is the view in the rest of the world) then these actions are inevitable?

Foriegn policy is not a popularity contest. The US stand on Israel is not and should not be subject to a global vote. The fact that the U.S. has the courage to take unpopular positions is to our credit.

The vast majority of anti-Israel feelings in the Middle East are based on racism and hatred that we would never let influence a debate on our own soil.

By the way, I am not Jewish, religious or right wing.

A bit late to be concerned I'd say.

Does it matter? Depends on whether pissing off 20% of the muslim world (instead of the 1% who are implacable terrorists) is your idea of "well these things happen" fatalism.
America was supposed to be the land of the practical. Now it seems to be reacting to a never-ending spiral of screw-ups.

Jack:

As someone who has lived in the Middle East, I have to say that the vast majority of anti-Israel feelings in the Middle East arise out of the fact that approx. 3/4 of a million Arabs were turfed out of their homes at gunpoint without any compensation.

I understand why Israel needs to exist, and I support its existence, but you have to be a fantacist to think that something like the righteous outrage over the Naqba would blow over in a few years. It far exceeds Rummy's "we'll be welcomed as liberators" belief in terms of misguided optimism.

I also think it is in the Arabs' best interests to be forward-looking, and not fixate on what happened in 47-48, because what happened then cannot be undone. But to date, nobody has seemed to be able to convince the Arab Street that that is the case.

> due to their source apparently recanting
> or at least dissimulating

Given the history of even the most independent, strong-willed members of the Bush Administration leaving the administration, speaking their minds about some issue, then suddenly shutting up and recanting 3 days later, then disappearing from view, I can't really view a retraction by an anonymous source who was probably quite easy for Rumsfeld, etc. to identify, and probably quite a mid-level, mortgage-paying, military-health-care using guy, really proving much of anything.

Cranky

Yes you are right to be concerned.

Just a few weeks ago this and a lot of other blogs were all talking about how the war was leading to an outbreak of democracy across the
Mideast. Yet, this is in sharp contrast.

That both of these strands going on at the same time shoud not be a big surpise.

The current situation is suppose to be like the cold war. Although a strong military was a necessary condition in the cold war victory,
it was not a sufficient condition. So we are in a sitution where we have one hand -- I'm not going to call it the left or right -- doing the right thing and the other hand offsetting that good.

But the fundamental strategy question of giving the military the leading role in foreign policy, and having it start with the presumption that Muslims are the enemy has to be called into quesion by this and other reports. Read the front page story in todays Times about the death of a probably innocent prisoner in Afghanistan. Is this the right approach to eliminating the power of anti-american elements? The US example of a free, democratic, prosperous nations gives us a hudge head start in wining the GWOT but we continue to offset that advantage with our single minded pursuit of questionable military tactics.

Look at the polls, the muslim world loves the US, but hates our policies. Doesn't this tell you something.

Bart,

Good points. I am far from being a blind supporter of everything Israel does. However, I do think part of the reason that nobody has convinced the Arab street not to fixate on 47-48 is that no one is trying. Rather they are whipping up anger, then saying to the US, look the Arab population is angry.

I am not sure I agree 100% that the majority of anger comes from turfing out 3/4 of a million people. Many of the Palestinians lost land at the hands of Arabs at that time and the creation of Israel is not at the top of the list of harm done to Arabs. The arguement that 4 million Jews in a piece of land the size of Delaware is destabilizing the entire Middle East is a stretch.

My point was that sometimes the US is going to do things that are unpopular and create "anti-Americanism", but if the things are right we have to do them. On the other hand, we should be careful to do less harm. If Arabs are outraged about the treatment of innocent people by US troops in Iraq, they are largely right. In my earlierb post, I did note that a portion of anti-Americanism is self-inflicted.

Finally, I think anti-Americanism hurts others as much as it hurts us. In Germany Shroeder is whipping up anti-Americanism to distract Germans from problems with local causes. It worked last time and may work again. But the victims here are the Germans who fritter away another opportunity to vote in their best interest because they thinjk they are voting against ours.

Increased anti-Americanism has real consequences: it allows nations to ignore us when we make declarations about outrages happening around the world. It allows China to diss our North Korean efforts, and suffer no diplomatic cost for doing so. It permits the loathsome Jacques Chirac (who only avoids indictment as long as he remains President) to be, *yuck*, respected, as he attempts to sell weapons and French leadership around the world. And, it's robably a factor that's allowing the corrupt Canadian government to remain in power without an election.

We don't have to be loved. But at this point, it's increasingly questionable whether we are even respected. If the path to safety is selling the world Democracy, then we have to be very concerned with this.

But our policy is not "selling" the world democracy. I would like to see tha policy.

Our policy is imposing democracy at the point of a gun.

That is a very different policy.

AM, as one who does not believe the path to safety has primarily to do with selling the world democracy, let me say three things about this important subject:

First, being liked and respected is a condition that comes and goes. It depends on both the subject and object, another way of saying that a country like the United States may very well be disliked, or admired, in different countries at different times for what seem to us like the wrong reasons. This fact mandates that we not worry quite so much about whether we are admired as we should about being worthy to be admired.

Having said that, let me immediately add a caveat: we need to be careful about thinking of American society as the ideal, not in a philosophical sense but in terms of whether foreign audiences are likely to be as impressed with things we take for granted as we are. Examples: our revered First Amendment makes possible a very large and thoroughly repulsive pornography industry. Arabs viewing pictures from Abu Ghraib might be forgiven for thinking of them not as betrayals but as confirmations of American values. The trial of Saddam Hussein is another example; we take it for granted that the most important thing is for trial procedures to be fair and beyond reproach from the accused, regardless of how long the trial takes. Saddam's victims, and there are a lot of them, might well question whether this is noble, idealistic, or just stupid.

The final point relates to a practical application of the first. The Perception Highway is not a one-way street; especially when dealing with Muslims and especially Arabs, we need to be conscious not only of how they feel about us, but how our people are likely to feel about them. It should be obvious that this applies especially to personnel interacting with them on a regular basis. Like it or not, the fact is that to the extent Americans think about Arabs their opinion of them is likely to be very low, and this is even likelier among military personnel and prison guards who have to deal with some of the worst of the worst. Great discipline and precise direction are required to keep feelings from being manifested in policy, and a major failing of the American military in the prison abuse scandal is that neither discipline nor direction were regularly and consistently exercised.

Youre right to worry about hearts and minds. I suspect everyone is wrong to focus so much on Abu G and Gitmo, and even Israel, as opposed to US involvement with the internal politics of muslim states like Egypt, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, etc.

Well the Great American Bubble is alive and well on this site. It would seem that the USA has not done anything wrong since WWII. This is a very american trait: to assume that our enemies are merely misguided and misinformed. It is a moral and very unpragmatic stance. Not good.

Z:

There are hazards to trying to address a question like this is two paragraphs. because, to tell the truth, I don't think the biggest problem we have with increases in anti-americanism are in the Middle East. (They didn't like us when Clinton was President, either. And, my guess is that there is always a rent-a-crowd available for noxious protests on assorted pretexts.) The worrisome thing is the increase elsewhere, and the problems that causes us when we are trying to deal with problems around the world. And this is of concern, whether you are a Wilsonian devoted to the winning of hearts and minds, or a Realist, trying to find a fellow politician to back you. In a more anti-American world, that politician is more willing to curry favor with his people by obstructing US policy, or is constrained from full support of your position on the grounds that it supports US imperialism and unilateralism.

Sure, AM, but what do you mean by elsewhere?

Depending on the answer to that question, anti-Americanism could be something we can address by better public diplomacy, or by substantive policy changes, or not at all. Anti-Americanism is not a single phenomenon; the reasons for and importance of it will vary from place to place, and may well need to be addressed in different ways depending on which country we are talking about.

The United States is spreading liberty and freedom throughout out the world.

Yes, like it or not, freedom is on the march.

If the boots of liberty crushes people, then those are the sacrifices for freedom.

If thousands, or even millions, of people need to be killed so that democracy can bloom…then, thank you Lord, for giving us a leader like Bush, who can make those tough decisions.

Muslims aren’t really fully human, so all these complaints about offending them are misplaced.

Z:

Elsewhere means "other than the Mideast." Because, with the exception, perhaps, of the Ukraine, I can't think of anywhere outside of the Mideast where the US is more popular now than it was a few years ago.

By the way, Dan's question was "are you worried", not "how do you fix it". I'm worried. I don't have solutions.

Why are people so anti-American and not, say,
anti-Muslim?

An easy answer is that if you are, say,
anti-Muslim you stand a very high probability
of being murdered. While if you are anti-American
you stand a very high probability of being thought
incredibly wise.

The hard answer, for guys like exclab, is that
America is the most powerful nation the world
has ever known. And our power, with respect
to the rest of the world, is increasing at an
even greater rate than, say, in the middle
of the 20th century.

It doesn't matter if we are nice or mean to
the rest of the world. The rest of world
RESENTS the fact that what we do IMPACTS
the entire globe. And, for example, what
Chirac does, barely matters outside of
metropolitan Paris.

If we sneeze, the rest of the world gets
a very nasty cold. If the rest of the
world becomes infected with a really bad
virus ... well, except for academia, ...
we don't even notice.

A Brit tabloid is running a photo of Saddam in his undies, which I'm certain is an insult to Islam and is probably the fault of the US.

Oh, yeah, the guy is responsible for hundreds of thousands of murders, but we vile Americans must protect his dignity.

International relations is a cross between MAD magazine and the Twilight Zone.

"But our policy is not "selling" the world democracy. I would like to see tha policy.

Our policy is imposing democracy at the point of a gun.

That is a very different policy."

Is THAT what we did in former Soviet States in Eastern Europe. Same in Lebanon as well I guess.
Funny, I thought all we did was lend our diplomatic and logistical aid. Musta missed that MoveOn.Org Memo of "Reasons Why America Sucks No. 973".

Daniel Pipes forwards another piece of this complex, a complex comprised of too few transparent and more thoughtful explications and too many narratives forwarded with the aid of ideological fervor, mandacity and unexamined assumptions more generally.

Too, will again offer a backgrounder for understanding so many of the anti-American motifs and initiatives throughout the world: Transatlantic Intelligencer's The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy. Of modest length, but very much serves to high-light what undergirds and forwards precisely the ideological religiosity and zealotry alluded to above.

If the U.S. is going to seriously attend to and make an attempt to correct its course when needed, when mistakes actually are made, then the various analyses which presume to articulte the problem need to purge themselves of their own mistakes and more mendacious rhetorical initiatives. If not, they don't deserve to be taken seriously and the degree to which they will fail to be taken seriously will continue to expand, not contract.

Of course you're right to be concerned--you live in a city high on the target list, and American treatment of detaineees serves mainly to ease the recruitment of more Muslims dying to kill us.
Of course the world's hegemonic power arouses hostility. But that's all the more reason for it to use its immense power with wisdom and restraint. And obviously not to do the stupid, counterproductive things it has--picking up detainees haphazardly, and then subjecting them to treatment not only illegal and inhumane but pointless. Remember that the Secretary of State and many other officials strongly oppposed the inanity of traducing the Geneva Convention, other international agreements, and domestic laws on torture. It was by no means inevitable that we Americans would have to read of such shameful acts as those reported in the New York Times. I literally wept--I don't know if more out of shame at what I'm implicated in as an American or outrage at how I and my family and my fellow Americans are put at greater risk by these crimes. But I do understand why it is that thus far only two officers have been acted against: the many high-ranked officers in the field who bear the brunt of responsibilty have to much to reveal about how the trail leads back to Washington. The man who the other night at a news conference as much as defended the necessity of torture, and who at the outset of the war on terror declared detainess to be in a category only ambiguously protected by standards of law and humanity--that man is the chief culprit. Along with the many Americans who fully subscribe to his views, some of whom have written you today.
You can thank yourself that at least in November you voted to send packing the fools and scoundrels who have not only defiled our finest traditions but also endangered our very lives.
And as for the Newsweek report: who would deny for a moment that among the many antic crimes perpetrated in our detention centers, Koran flushing and other insults to Islam have not been rife? The gravamen of the report is not news and not subject to credible denial. And who believes for a moment either that the adminstration can only fear discovery of the true extent of acts like those reported in Newsweek?
So yes, you have a lot to be concerned about. But not an essentially well founded report by Michael Isikoff.

Ted, Of course you are right. A surplus of power does make one immune to greater suffering. And so one can take the privelege of not bothering to inform oneself about broader issues outside one's country. GW certainly conducts himself in this way. That might explain his popularity. I am guessing therefore that you agree. Americans live in a bubble and are not particularly interested in what goes on outside the bubble. In Iraq for example, it is as if we stuck one hand outside the bubble and covered our eyes with the other, blindly groping about and making a mess.

That indeed is our privelege. It is not a thrifty perogative, in fact in terms of political capital, its like flushing money down the toilet. But that is the choice that has been made in foriegn affairs since WWII in the USA.

Trickle Down Ideological Superiority

The blithely intoned omniscience and glib air of superiority is common among pious congregants inhabiting the narrow confines and orthodoxies of the Left.

common
adj.
a) Occurring frequently

b) Of mediocre or inferior quality

exclab: This is exactly what enfuriates[sic] the rest of the world; a tendency to stop addressing the other side in common terms of understanding and simply insisting that the discussion be on american terms.
Has it ever occured to you that in arrogating to yourself the definition of 'common terms of understanding,' you commit the very sin of high-handedness you accuse the US of (and reveal yourself as a hypocritical nitwit into the bargain)?

Brad R: Ain't nothin' more Christian than a good killin' after all...
How ironic to find this bit of silliness on a thread sparked by a homicidal Muslim riot ...

MTC: If persons of goodwill existed in the Administratoin,[sic] they would set to work on reestablishing that line so that when a "Koran in the toilet" story emerges, the first reaction is, "That cannot be true."
No, if persons of goodwill existed in the Administration, they would set to work on establishing an atmosphere such that when a "Koran in the toilet" story emerges, the first reaction is the same as the current reaction when the symbols and sites of other religions are desecrated by Muslims. To do otherwise is the bigotry of low expectations.

erg: I should also point out that a lot of people outside the US don't get their news from US media, so hashing the MSM is also somewhat counter-productive.
Perhaps I missed something, but where was MSM defined as specifically American? Bad as CBS, NBC, etc. are, they don't hold a candle to the partisan hacks at the BBC and AFP.

Hal: Yea, northing [sic]is our fault. We're practically perfect in every way.
Do you buy that straw in bulk? There's a world of difference between 'perfect in every way' and 'imperfect in every way.'

Should we be concerned that fanatic Islamists are anti-American? I would be concerned if they were not.

I'd like to know the name of the unamed source. Was this person from a Congress instead of the Admin per drudge? Just as I'd like to know who typed the forge CBS papers, and who disclosed Plame's job? Is it to much for the press to tell their readers this stuff when the unattributed sources got things so badly wrong, or just disclosed something illegal to disclose?

Anti-Americanism hurts us in a few ways. One not commented on much is that smart young people dont want to come here anymore. I see this sentiment expressed many times by smart friends these days. The silver lining is that the cream of the crop still wants the best universities and companies.

Trickle down ideological superiority (also called American exceptionalism) actually describes pretty well the self-understanding of the inhabitants of that city on the hill. But the new grand American strategy, according to your typical Daniel Drezner commenter, seems to be Empire By Navel-Gazing!

peri: Here, I am watching BBC and CNN Asia version and the quality is awesome.
bwahahahaha

We deserve quality world news.
Everyone does. Pity nobody gets it, especially not from CNN or the BBC.

We Americans need to be in tune with the world ...
Can I get a kumbaya, too? Seriously, you do know in tune is a two-way street, right?

... and not so self centered.
Self-centered, and we're stingy, too.

This will help.
Help what, exactly?

I think we are to blame.
Of course you do. Those folks who murdered 17 people in a fit of pique, they're innocent as newborn babes. It's all the nasty, nasty Americans' fault (probably Israel's, too).

We need to respect other cultures.
Ah, my daily dose of irony. Thank you.

Cranky: I can't really view a retraction by an anonymous source who was probably quite easy for Rumsfeld, etc. to identify, and probably quite a mid-level, mortgage-paying, military-health-care using guy, really proving much of anything.

Translation: "I want to believe it, and contrary testimony can be safely blamed on the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy."

Oscar,

Your kneejerk reply serves to exemplify the very point made, i.e., a non-substantive response that serves to deflect via sweeping generalizations and simplistic, pious and self-serving arrogations.

Dear Achillea

Do you find people suddenly get mad at you and scream "you aren't listening!" I would pay attention IIWY. For example by saying "common terms of understanding" I do not define those terms. Because those terms would be common ie understood ( that being what an understanding is ) in common (that is by either party in the understanding ) but not the exclusive terms of one or the other of the parties in need of terms for a discussion. Where you get the idea the idea that I am deciding what those terms might be, I do not know. Being common they would have to be decided by the discussing parties. I sense though that you are on a rhetorical rampage of some inspiration known only to you, and it is for other posters to watch you, in knowing amusement.

One of the fun things about visiting blogs is reading the comments from people who are intentionally outrageous. Whether they present themselves as hard-right or hard-left, or simply use over-the-top prose to make their point, it can be quite entertaining.

Sometimes, I must admit, it's hard to tell when commenters are serious or not.

Exclab's post immediately above this one must be intentionally ridiculous, mustn't it?

And Michael B, this (from way up the thread) is classic:

"The blithely intoned omniscience and glib air of superiority is common among pious congregants inhabiting the narrow confines and orthodoxies of the Left."

Classic, that is, if you're trying to sound foolish.

Thanks for the entertainment.

Andrew,

Rather than kneejerk a response and return scorn for scorn, I'll more simply note the following, at least for now. First the quote, as a refresher:

"The blithely intoned omniscience and glib air of superiority is common among pious congregants inhabiting the narrow confines and orthodoxies of the Left."

That appeared immediately after this post by 'Governedbyfools' and this post by 'exclab'.

Too, 'Achilla' has already furnished perhaps a dozen additional examples in several posts above, examples of more or less the same type of thing.

In other words, it's simply description of far too many on the left; it remains accurate, all too accurate, as demonstrated.

The man who the other night at a news conference as much as defended the necessity of torture, and who at the outset of the war on terror declared detainess to be in a category only ambiguously protected by standards of law and humanity--that man is the chief culprit.

It keeps coming back to this...

I used to think that Bush-hatred was merely the left-wing version of the Clinton-hatred of the 90s.

I was wrong- it's worse.

Final post for the evening, to clarify further. Both of the referenced posts above immediately followed a post referencing this Daniel Pipes article and this more lengthy post by Trans-Int, each of which very much helps to set the overall discussion within a broader set of contexts that are all too relevant. Those are contexts which the exclab's and Governedbyfools's of the world, among many others, variously on the Left, often refuse to acknowledge, even mendaciously so.

The more substantial causes for sincerely born anti-Americanism need to be acknowledged and corrected, all well and good, e.g., as Anne Applebaum is appropriately quoted in the original post. On the other hand, kneejerking into "the usual suspects" of anti-Americanism and similar anti-Western themes by the left is precisely what validates my quote.

Actually, we are listening. It's just
that we are paying attention too. Much
of what is posted is sheer nonsense.

The fact remains. What the United States
decides to do matters. EVERY OTHER COUNTRY
can only react to what WE do.

I know that is terribly non-PC to state.
The truth is like that.

And what really drives the Lefties crazy is
that they realize America is growing stronger
each day. While everyone else is weakening.

"China will catch you Americans in the 21st
Century. Just you wait." is a common refrain.

China is going to drown in its own wastes in
the 21st century. 18 of the 20 most polluted
cities in the world are in the PRC.

For those environmentalists on this blog, you
can use it a perfect example of what happens
to a society with absolutely no Environmental
Quality Laws.

Contrast it with the United States which imposed
Environmental Standards back in the early 1970's!
Signed by Nixon of all people.

Again, the United States is relatively more
powerful than any other nation in the history
of the world.

No wonder they hate us.

Ted, Morality put to one side (where it ussually should be ) , Nixon was a hell of a working president. He worked as hard as Carter and was as wily as Clinton. He had ideas and he pursued them. He did his own thinking. He made monumental mistakes but they were somehow owned by him. But he also pulled some mighty coups. China was one. The economy was not so great. We can remember that Rummy and Dick had something to do with that. I didn't like Cambodia, but I liked the way old Tricky got down to work and tackled things that had a tangible, amoral political point. I miss that in every president since except perhaps Bush I.

The sun rose in the east today.

Abu Ghraib must have something to do with it.

The sun set in the west today.

Abu Ghraib must have something to do with it.

Muslims somewhere are unhappy.

Abu Ghraib must have something to with it.

Muslim extremists are outraged at the U.S.

Abu Ghraib must have something to do with it.

Everything which happens which some people don't like is always caused by something else that they don't like.

And there is no such thing as a Muslim nutball. They're just misunderstood. This especially applies to Muslim terrorists.

There are lots of people who have the above opinions.

So what else is new?

Yup, all the anti-Americanism is Bush's fault.

Those American flags burned in Tehran in 1979? Bush's fault.

Those anti-American marches by millions in Europe in the early '80s? Bush's fault.

That bombing in Lebanon in 1982? Bush's fault.

You see, this anti-Americanism is an entirely new phenominon and due entirely to Bush having personally ordered the torture of Muslims when as we all know Muslims had nothing to do with 9/11.

Dan,

I was gone for most of the week, came back to this, got off the above, went out for a walk and came back with some concerns here.

It starts with your Susan and her husband last week. You just exhibited a symptom of a mental disorder they clearly have:

Abu Ghraib Derangement Syndrome, whose virulent form seems to appear only in academics. Examination of DailyKos and MoveOn shows only the less virulent form, where exhibitions have markedly decreased in the last six months. Exhibitions of Abu Ghraib Syndrome have not tailed off in the least among academics.

Abu Ghraib Syndrome is related to O.J. Simpson Syndrome - a monomanical fixation on a particular event plus incessant relations of it to quite disparate and inappropriate subjects. See also the OJ Channel - All OJ All The Time.

Victims of the virulent form of both syndromes also exhibit cult-like behavior, which in your case is serious because you don't have tenure yet.

Continued contact with persons who are actual or potential threats to the cult will lead to ostracism.

Academia is definitely becoming a cult - ask Larry Summers.

IMO you face a choice between blogging and tenure. And here I'm not kidding. We're a threat to your tenure.

One of the nice things about organisations that oppose you is that they generally tell you why they are fighting you and in this case it is no exception.

Rather than arguing endlessly about why you think that they are fighting you and dislike them you can read these statements.

For instance, you can read the CNN 1997 interview with Osama Bin Laden.

He says that he opposes the US because they have troops in the Holy Land and because of their support for Israel.

Two years ago the military estimated there were about 5,000 insurgents in Iraq. A year ago the estimates were 10,000. Now it is 20,000. Meanwhile we have been arresting or kiling about 1,000 insurgents per month, or around 25,000 over the last couple of years.

If this is a successful policy I would sure hate to see the results of a bad policy.

A bad policy, spencer, would be zero kills. For example, in the aftermath of WTC '93, which occurred barely one month into the prior President's first term. They treated it as a domestic crime, even though they uncovered, within relatively few weeks and months after WTC '93, that there were growing, broadly based jihadist movements throughout much of the Muslim world.

Zero would be worse, that would constitute a bad policy.

If we stay in Iraq for ten years, or if the new Iraqi troops and police perform well, or both, over ten years the terrorists will have lost by the numbers given above, perhaps 125 thousand men. That is a huge number. It is about two times the number we lost in Vietnam, at which point we threw in the towel because of disintegration of home front support. Looks like tht may happen here, but this time the Islamic terrorists will grab the towel, not us.

This sort of thing makes lots of our work in foreign policy harder. It contributes to negative perceptions about America in a generally similar country, and it generates suspicion that will make government-to-government work simply more difficult. I sure hope we got some good results, but the track record to date doesn't give me much reason to think so.

You can be overly concerned if you wish, but the anti-American rhetoric and attitude that you are discussing has been occuring for decades in both Western Europe and the Middle East . It tends to consist of a few carefully selected facts, a great deal of supposition, time-worn cliches, stereotypes, and, in present times, the pretense that the Cold War never existed and therefore the U.S. just instituted evil foreign policies for no reason other than they felt like it. Leaders of various groups in the Middle-East will continue to use anti-American rhetoric because it suits their purposes. Personally, I will care what western Europe thinks when they do two things. First, when they finally keep some of the goals and promises they made throughout the nineties and actually purchase their own logistics capabilities so they maneuver their own troops around their own continent and can therefore deal with their own problems in their own backyard. The American taxpayers have been stuck with this burden for far too long. Secondly, I will care when the nations of western Europe make concerted and sustained efforts to follow their own advice regarding international problems.

Here is a GREAT read on this situation:

http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/2005/05/frog-boils.html

"History's lesson is that this is "boiling frog" stuff; by the time most realize it is happening, it's too late to jump out of the pot. What's striking is how much of the moral imperative we have lost under this Administration, and the speed with which it has happened."

This sort of thing makes lots of our work in foreign policy harder.

Did you actually read the article?

Summary: three months after 9/11, the Swedish government decided to deport some Egyptians and asked the CIA to help out. The CIA provided an aircraft to transport the Egyptians back to Egypt.

The CIA personnel insisted on strip-searching them before putting them on the airplane, and put hoods on them as a precaution. Just in case you've forgotten already, this was in a situation involving the air transport of an admitted associate of Ayman Zawahiri- in case you've forotten, he's either #2 or #3 in Al Qaeda, about three months after the 9/11 attacks.

Pretty much everything else boils down to "our feelings were hurt" and "We don't understand why they did (something)".

But I would like to call attention to this:

The practice has generated increasing criticism from civil liberties groups; in Sweden a parliamentary investigator who conducted a 10-month probe into the case recently concluded that the CIA operatives violated Swedish law by subjecting the prisoners to "degrading and inhuman treatment" and by exercising police powers on Swedish soil.

"Degrading and inhuman treatment" in this case seems to mean they were subjected to an impromptu strip-search that took about 10 minutes.

Heaven preserve us all from such atrocities.

As someone unshy about pointing out American mistakes, I find it a little annoying those of the so-called right immeadiately attack my credibility. This happens over and over again and I am certainly not the only one. I not particularyly left or right. I am proud admirer of Newt Gingrich and Malcolm X. I hate Fidel Castro and GW.

Why can't people point out american faults? It seems that the US does everything wrong. There is a good reason for that. We have been the only ones in a position to do wrong, or right, the only ones to miss oppurtunities, invade the wrong country or rely on bad advisors or intel. Why? Because we are the only ones that matter. Our foriegn policy is a mess of policies based on bad intuition, bad leads and bad understanding. And it is good to point it out. If Europe mattered the picture you could paint of its policy would be much worse. But again, it doesn't matter. The same goes for Russia. And when China gets going I predict it will have the worst policies of all. Bad for us and bad for them.

So, I think the right should relax and accept the critics and stop abusing them with the following lame arguement "Your liberal orthodoxy is doomed. I do not have to answer your question because you are beneath contempt." or some variant there of. The USA is on the very top of the pile. Its actions matter. So it gets hit with critisism. Some of the best literature ever written was critisism of the British Empire. Sit back and enjoy. It may not last forever. If we remain a deliberative culture, maybe it will.

Geez, Dan, you'd think your guests on the left would be happy that my beloved "war machine" is having to slow down a little as it digests this monster.

We're all volunteers, Dan, and as Holsinger so (cruelly) aptly puts it - we've got tenure - (Well, job security - Man! Do I have job security.)which is more than can be said for you.

And by the way, Michael B, We're counting the idiots that bought the farm in the great newsweek riots of 2005. Those are good kills as far as we're concerned.

Tommy G,

Irony doesn't always translate well, but am interpreting your statement addressed to me without any irony. To the extent that those who died in the Great Newsweek Riots of 2005 (as you aptly put it) were themselves instigators of or participants in the rioting and violence, then the term 'idiots' is fine with me; but to the extent they were bystanders caught up in the melee, innocent of fanning the flames themselves, I would disagree. To be sure, if you're in the field or "in country" yourself, I appreciate the fact that such distinctions are not always simple or easy to apply, yet they're important, indeed they're critical distinctions nonetheless.

(And to be clear, am assuming your response was one reflecting opposition to my own general agreement with Anne Applebaum's quote in the primary post, which I'd characterize as being 70% or 80% agreement, depending upon what she intends more specifically, it's a fairly general statement. By contrast I disagree with Nossel's statement, immediately following Applebaum's, since Nossel's is more clearly motivated by prejudiced interests, presumably by temperment, ideology and/or simple political partisanship.)

No, no, Mike - I got a big kick out of your retort to Spence. Zero was a worse proposition than 1,000 a month.

I just didn't want your antagonist to discount the "Darwin" losses to the anti-democratic forces. If we can get 15 with a fake flushing, maybe we should slow down the 5.56 assembly lines and speed up the porcelin ones.

Are you old enough to rember Robin William's old stand-up bit about the stealth bomber (FB, actually) that crashed back in the 80's?

Got it, couldn't quite pick up your tone the first go-around. Don't remember that particular RW bit, but here's an RW one-liner I do recall and quickly found it via google:

My only hope is when those terrorists get to heaven, they meet up with the kind of virgins we had in Catholic school: Sister Mike Ditka from Our Mother of Eternal Retribution.

There are, I'd say, three groups involved: those who will hate us no matter what, those basically in love with us, and the middle, who are prejudiced against us but not usually interested in doing anything like that. (Imagine a desultory, GenX-style, "Oh, yeah, 'Death to America' and stuff---do you want some coffeee?") The problem with what looks like a definite and obvious contempt for Islam on the part of _some_ of our troops and their leaders primes the Big Middle Group to being used by those who hate us.

Similarly, very few people are really suicide bomber material, and they're completely unconvincible. Whom we _can_ convince consists of the society around them, and makes the difference between their being seen as pitiable misguided nuts or as sadly- and fondly-regarded martyrs. This in turn helps to determine if their numbers increase or fade out to some low, unpleasant-but-survivable, level that the Gummint can't use as an excuse to clamp down on our nation.

no, you are not overly concerned about it. You aren't concerned enough about it, if you have to ask that question.

Although "anti-Americanism" has existed for ages, what is happening now is unique for three reasons:

1) Anti-Americanism in most of the world was on the wane during the Clinton administration, but has skyrocketed during the Bush regime.

2) There is a sense that the nature of anti-Americanism has changed. In the past, "anti-Americanism" was based to a very large extent on "cultural" issues. Other cultures looked at American culture, and didn't like what they saw and wanted to maintain their own cultural values. (Indeed, the foundation for anti-Americanism among Islamic fundamentalists is based on the "cultural imperialism" issue.) Under the Bush regime, this "dislike" of the US has become far more intense because fear of the US is now an issue. The US is acting like a bully -- and that has changed the nature of Anti-Americanism.

3) By grossly exagerating the threat posed by al Qaeda to American national security, the US has massively increased the stature of radical Islamic fundamentalism throughout the world. The radical Islamic fundamentalists are the people who are agressively resisting the bullying Americans, and wind up being perceived as the means by which American aggression can be contained.

Daniel,

What Holsinger said about this blog being a danger to your shot at tenure.

Ties to outside reality inside a cult are excised by cult leaders as a threat. They are "Unclean! Unclean!"

Your Academic monoculture would do well to go to places Strategypage.com rather than your blog for its doses of reality.

Point of fact this is what James Dunnigan says about the "Newsweak Effect"

>INFORMATION WARFARE: Where the
>Newsweek Effect Doesn't
>
>May 23, 2005: Still More on the Koran
>desecration story. While U.S. pundits
>on the left defend, and those on the
.right condemn, Newsweek for its now
>retracted story on abuse of the Koran
>by American interrogators at
>Guantanamo, an important real story
>is being completely overlooked. There
>was no rioting or anti-American
>outbursts in Kuwait, Oman, the
>U.A.E., or anywhere else in Arabia.
>While the governments of the various
>states on the Arabian Peninsular and
>in the Gulf expressed public concern
>over the initial report of alleged
>desecration of the Koran, they also
>called for investigations, and widely
>broadcast Newsweek's subsequent
>retraction. There appears to have
>been only one public demonstration, a
>peaceful one in Yemen that received
>no press coverage, not even on Al-
>Jazeera. This strongly indicates that
>the events in Pakistan and
>Afghanistan were well orchestrated,
>with plans in place so that violent
>demonstrations could be set off
>whenever a pretext arose. The initial
>violence occurred in Pakistan, set
>off by a politician who had been
>seeking some attention, and found the
>Newsweek article fit his needs.
>Violence quickly followed in
>Afghanistan, and just as quickly
>disappeared in both countries.

The long and the short of it was that our Islamofascist enemies had our mainsteam media templated.

They were waiting with canned riots until the next showing of the "Abu Ghraib Channel" appeared. Newsweek and Isakoff were the patsies...this time.

There will be others. The MSM can't help itself any more than any other addict or cultist.

Please consider for a moment the policy implications for the American government of the Islamofascists templating American academia as well as the MSM for the "Abu Ghraib Syndrome". The Islamofascists already have 'agents of influence' in Middle Eastern Studies programs across America and Europe via Saudi Grant money. If Western Academia is totally consumed by the Abu Gharib Syndrome, it is useless for the American Federal government at any level for national security policy making.

This has profound implications for the two political parties and the funding of academia. Republicans have alternate institutions like Beltway think tanks to house, groom and develope Middle Eastern and national security Scholars.

The Democrats will only have Academia, which thanks to its leftist control of tenure selection monoculture, will be worse than useless.

DoD is 50% of discressionary Federal spending. Having a real war crowds out Congress' ability to pork DoD's budget, so they are going to go anywhere else they can to get that pork.

The end result will be -- given a Republican majority Federal government -- the eventual defunding of academia and the turning of what little money goes to it into Federal budget pork for Republican Representatives and Senators.

Although "anti-Americanism" has existed for ages, what is happening now is unique for three reasons:

1) Anti-Americanism in most of the world was on the wane during the Clinton administration, but has skyrocketed during the Bush regime.

Well, Clinton was, um, special. He had mastered the art of telling people what they wanted to hear, and then doing something else. Sign Kyoto? Sure- but Clinton never sent it to the Senate for ratification. Ditto the ICC, and a few other treaties.

In contrast, Bush is straightforward- Kyoto and the ICC were not going to be ratified by the Senate, and Bush had the guts to point out that the emperor had no clothes. For this, he was portrayed as the 'Toxic Texan' and someone who feared being convicted of war crimes, which are both absolute nonsense.

But some people want it to be true, so the myth persists.

2) There is a sense that the nature of anti-Americanism has changed. In the past, "anti-Americanism" was based to a very large extent on "cultural" issues.

That is very, very debatable. Americans- the people- are generally liked around the world. What is disliked is our government, and that is almost always because of it's policies. If the real objection was to our culture, Americans would be disliked.

[...] Under the Bush regime, this "dislike" of the US has become far more intense because fear of the US is now an issue. The US is acting like a bully -- and that has changed the nature of Anti-Americanism.

Provably false, sir. If fear of the US was the driving issue, other nations would be significantly increasing their military spending and forming alliances to counter the US. Instead, in most of the world, defense spending is being cut, cooperation with the US is increasing on military matters, and stronger ties to the US are being persued- one example of which is the recent US-Japan agreement regarding Taiwan, another the Proliferation Security Initiative, and of course, NATO enlargement- Ukraine's ultimate goal is membership, and it's not because they want a security guarantee backed by France and Germany.

The nations that dislike the US now are nations that disliked us with President Clinton, Bush Sr, and Reagan, too. How is this Bush's fault?

3) By grossly exagerating the threat posed by al Qaeda to American national security, the US has massively increased the stature of radical Islamic fundamentalism throughout the world. The radical Islamic fundamentalists are the people who are agressively resisting the bullying Americans, and wind up being perceived as the means by which American aggression can be contained.

...by fools, perhaps. Anyone with more than two neurons can see that the cure is much worse than the disease.

I am not concerned about anti americanism because it's been around since this country was founded.
It grew as the economic power of the US grew.

Most people in the middle east were raised to hate the jews. Our support for Israel kept them from attacking them again. Our involvement in trying to come to a peace agreement fueled resentment. Ask a middle easterner why he hates the US and he'll speak of "stealing oil" which is a joke, because withoutr oil, the middle east would be "a pinky" on a hand, just like africa.

Why do they hate us? I honestly don't care. Is any country "liked" ? Europeans colonized much of the world does no one hate them?

Muslims know that they must change, those in power will not give it up easily.

Just look at the countries who promote anti americanism, (not including the middle east....) Germany, France, Russia & Canada... These govt's do so in order to keep their citizens focused elsewhere in orde to cover up their politicians ineptness.

Don't tell me we're responsible for the "mistakes" our country has done! What country hasn't made errors! And don't tell me Bush is to blame! that's B.S. They hated Reagan and they thought Clinton was a joke. They lovewd his bedroom antics, because it took the US down to their level.

They fear us, they hate us, screw them. Because when it comnes down to facts, they need us and we need them.

As for torturing muslim prisioners, I hardly think humilation is torture. these people knwo eactly what PR buttons to push. To be honest, if the US has to torture a prisioner to get information to save US lives, I say go for it!

Re: "Yup, all the anti-Americanism is Bush's fault.

"Those American flags burned in Tehran in 1979? Bush's fault.

"Those anti-American marches by millions in Europe in the early '80s? Bush's fault."

I think there's actually an important point to be noted here -- it's not that populations around the world have always been anti-American, actually, as the above might suggest. It's that the youth, back in the 80s, tended more towards anti-Americanism than did their parents, who generally still remembered (however distantly) how they were liberated from Japan or from Germany by American soldiers. Goodwill towards America in those days did not, I think, have a whole heck of a lot to do with any sort of agreement with American *ideals* -- so many of those countries flirted with socialism and dictatorship, after all: France, Japan, South Korea, etc. It was purely a response to our shelling out buckets of blood and money for them with no immediate gain to ourselves. I.e. we bribed them for it.

The younger generation weren't bought. Some of them did go in for our ideals, sure. But a lot of them -- probably the most passionate and committed among them -- went in for the other side, and plumped for socialism or even communism. Maybe they weren't Red Brigades or Baader-Meinhof or anything like that, but their sympathies were against us.

Now, that younger generation -- Joschka Fischer and his ilk -- have grown up and *they* are the ones who are in power, both in government and in society. They constitute the major voting blocs, the cultural movers and shakers, the trend-setters. And they're still, on balance anti-American. And the filter they get to set for their society is basically anti-American too.

This may not be (is not, I think) the case for the Middle East, but I think it is the case with many of the most high-profile examples of anti-Americanism among our nominal allies.

----

In other cases (linking up with the point re: young people not coming here anymore), dislike of America probably stems in part from coming here, and disliking what they found. A comparison (mildly Godwinesque) might be made to Bin Laden himself, who studied, IIRC, at Oxford, and rejected the culture of the West (as many of his kinsmen did not) not out of ignorance or a failure on our part to sell it, but because seeing for himself what it was, and where that Western road led -- the liberty and the vulgar license -- he was disgusted, and decided that a different path (his path) was better. A lot of anti-Americanism may well be driven by that kind of disgust with American culture, as experienced in America proper.

One might counter that American cultural products do well around the world, but I don't think that really works. American cultural products are one thing, but I don't think we can jump from foreign appreciation of American cultural products to foreign appreciation of American culture, any more than we can jump from, say, American consumption of Japanese cultural products (e.g. comics, cartoons, karate) to American embrace of Japanese culture. Just as many people who like Hollywood movies would hate for the culture they reflect to be realised in their own communities (e.g. conservative communities, here in the US proper), I think many foreign audiences may enjoy the products of American culture while despising the culture itself, or realising that they despise when they see it for themselves. There are exceptions, of course -- Chirac dislikes American cultural influence, I think, but he's protested that he loved his time in America as a young man -- but by and large, I do not think that foreigners all come away from America stunned by how wonderful it is to have an American-style culture of openness etc etc (insert all our self-praise for our classical liberalism). I think an equally likely outcome, for many foreign visitors, is a mild contempt at the behaviour of those uncivilised savages (us). And this kind of experience feeds anti-Americanism too, with a desire to keep that ugly (if diverting) culture from gaining a foothold in their own communities.