[lbo-talk] Apres L'Empire

[Shane Taylor]

Michael Pugliese fwd'd:
> Writing in The Public Interest
> http://www.thepublicinterest.com/ , James Ceaser
> offers "A Geneology of anti-Americanism."
>
> America's rise to the status of the world's premier
> power, while inspiring much admiration, has also
> provoked widespread feelings of suspicion and
> hostility. In a recent and widely discussed book on
> America, Après L'Empire, credited by many with
> having influenced the position of the French
> government on the war in Iraq, Emmanuel Todd
> writes: "A single threat to global instability weighs
> on the world today: America, which from a protector
> has become a predator." A similar mistrust of
> American motives was clearly in evidence in the
> European media's coverage of the war. To have
> followed the war on television and in the newspapers
> in Europe was to have witnessed a different event
> than that seen by most Americans. During the few
> days before America's attack on Baghdad, European
> commentators displayed a barely concealed glee -
> almost what the Germans call schadenfreude - at
> the prospect of American forces being bogged down
> in a long and difficult engagement. Max Gallo, in
> the weekly magazine Le Point, drew the typical
> conclusion about American arrogance and ignorance:
> "The Americans, carried away by the hubris of their
> military power, seemed to have forgotten that not
> everything can be handled by the force of arms ...
> that peoples have a history, a religion, a country."

Michael, what exactly is anti-Americanism?  In your own words, I mean. 
Is it simply a pejorative for the belief that US foreign policy is a
threat to global stability, or suspicion of US motives?  What is so
sinister about saying American military hubris has made the war's
conductors forget the limits of force, and saying it early?

I've known many intelligent Americans who are by any reasonable standards
"moderates" say these very things.  By Ceaser's apparent standard, Bill
Moyers is anti-American.

-- Shane

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