American anti-Americanism: What's the cause? Will it persist? If not, then what?

Great Debates
181

Agreed there exist a group of people (albeit small in number) within this country that tend to be prejudiced against their own government (which I suspect is related to the government being Democratic or Republican) but what about the other side? There definitely exists a counter-balancing group that are prejudiced in favor of their government. This is the group that tends to sweep every one of America’s ills and mistakes with the line: “I agree America isn’t perfect, but…”

It also appears to me that the latter group is larger in size than the former and that is more frightening to me. Better to err on the side of being overcritical than on the side of being blissfully asleep.

182

America can do a great deal of good; just as soon as we get that idiot Bush out of the White House.:smiley:

Bush =/ America.

The current administration is arrogant. We have the ability to do good, but destroying the economy, pillaging our natural resources, eroding our civil rights, and creating a foreign policy nightmare that we may never extract ourselves from, is NOT good. I’m sorry but declaring the UN to be “irrelevant” is virtually the definition of arrogance. You are free to disagree, but these things are a matter of opinion. Just because others don’t agree with your idea of “good” doesn’t make them bigots. Since you never responded to the question of why you think liberals criticizing Bush is different than conservatives criticizing Clinton, I can only assume that you have conceded the point. So your premise that criticizing Bush is somehow an act of bigotry, is the utmost in hypocrisy.

News Flash: We ain’t delivering toys. A better analogy would be The Little Engine that unilaterally decided to take over the whole train yard by force, against the wishes of all the rest of the train engines.

What’s annoying is people hiding behind the flag and refusing to listen to reason.

183

Let’s ask a former President what he thinks:

184

If by “arrogant” you mean that they have the confidence to undertake major actions based on their own judgments, then I agree. I don’t know whether this is better or worse than Clinton’s usual caution, but it’s certainly different.

Yes, it’s a kind of national arrogance to say that we know better than the entire United Nations. I think that’s what Newsweek meant by the term, also. So far, ISTM we so far have turned out to be right.

I already acknowledged that it’s a judgment.

Actually, the point I was aiming at has to do with confidence in America’s morality and power in the world. Conservatives who (wrongly IMHO) criticized Clinton for what he did in the former Yugoslavia were mostly upset that he did too little.

Actually, we released a group of young children from a children’s prison in Baghdad where they locked up the kids of parents deemed disloyal to the regime. Being released from prison is even better than getting a toy, doncha think?

Well, I think the group is fairly large. Otherwise main stream newsmagazine like Newsweek wouldn’t be a part.

Yes, to a degree. Still, suppose Clinton had decided to effect Iraq regime change in 1998, without authorization from the UN. He had some provocation, since the inspection process had collapsed. I think there would have been similar anti-war demonstrations and opposing editorials.

I agree.

That depends on whether action is urgently needed. The children in Saddam’s prison and his thousands of torture victims might disagree.

jr8, I take your point that patriotism can be harmful if it leads to a crushing of all dissent.

Anyhow, back to the topic. Whether dissent is good or bad, I think it will diminish in the near future, and its reduction will lead to a quandry for the Democrats. On the one hand, dissenters are a core constituency, Many elected Democrats are critics. OTOH if more an more Americans oppose being overly critical, then this position will be a political loser.

185

“It’s a judgement”, “it’s a judgement”, “it’s a judgement”. Fine. Just understand that your judgement is NOT fact and if I ever see you try to pass it off as such, especially condemming someone as “anti-American” then I’m going to call you on it. Hard.

Enjoy,
Steven

186

What’s wrong with judgments? Condemning someone as a “bigot” is also a judgment. So, what?

187

Judging people is just dandy, unless a) it’s not based on a factual evaluation of the situation, or b) you’re wrong.

188

arrogant - Overbearing and self-important; haughty. C’mon December; did I really have to tell you what it means? Caution is not necessarily a bad thing. For what it’s worth, I agree that Clinton had a tendency to be reactive rather than pro-active. However, it’s hard to fault him now when you consider how much our country prospered while he was president. And I’ll take caution over foolhardyness any day. There’s a world of difference between confidence and reckless abandon.

Then I don’t understand why you are so adamantly critical of Newsweek.

I’m not familiar with the acronym “ISTM”. If it means “not”, then I agree.:smiley:

Excuse me, but you have continually argued that your personal opinion is the correct one, and those who disagree are un-American. You acknowledged nothing.

So obviously some people favor cowboy diplomacy, while others prefer wisdom and restraint, when necessary. I can just as easily argue that conservatives who attacked Clinton lack confidence in America’s moral ability to have a sane and well-informed foreign policy. Those are simply two different partisan views. Neither is “anti-American”. Just because you stuck the word “moral” in there does not make your opponents anti-moral.

We also killed children. Being dead is worse than getting a toy, don’t YOU think?

Besides which, this argument that keeps getting tossed around that we did this to help the Iraqi people is disengenuous. That was NOT the original stated reason for the war, and you know it. Unless you are prepared to argue that we must invade China, Africa, Iran, Syria, and North Korea (and others), the idea that we had a moral imperative to invade Iraq doesn’t carry much weight. As tempting as it is to want to be the world’s police force, we just can’t (or shouldn’t, at least) do it. There are international standards of behavior, and a central tenet of those standards is that you don’t unilaterally invade sovereign countries. Period. We violated that standard, and if you think we did it out of altruism, you are hopelessly naive. Not even President Bush was foolish enough to try to suggest that our motives were selfless; which is why he came up with the flimsy connection to 9/11. If we want to have any credibility as a nation, we cannot demand that others abide by international law while we flagrantly violate it. If the rest of the world doesn’t want to do things the exact same way WE want to do them, we don’t get to just take our marbles and go home. My view is not anti-Americanism, it is simple sanity.

189

quote:

and that is more frightening to me. Better to err on the side of being overcritical than on the side of being blissfully asleep.

december’s reply:
That depends on whether action is urgently needed. The children in Saddam’s prison and his thousands of torture victims might disagree.

***Let me follow this train of thought here. Bush admin went to Iraq to free the prisoners and the people of Iraq from tryanny. Those who opposed the action or at least were critical of it were wrong because they were blocking urgent action… So, in effect, those who made the choice to be critical were in fact opposing an urgent humanitarian action. So, aren’t they anti-Iraqi people as well as anti-American? Fie on them!

I don’t think it needs to be said as you may continue to ignore it, but, one can be critical of the admin despite actually supporting the war. One can find the way they went about it wrong, one can find the way they deceived the American people wrong, one can find their ulterior motives repulsive so on and so forth. In fact, there is a segment of the “anti-Americans” who believe that this war may make America less safer. I wonder how such a purely ethnocentric thought can be considered anti-American.

190

If by “confident” you mean “completely ignoring the reasonable and justifiable opinions of many of your constituents and large parts of the rest of the world,” then yeah, we agree that “arrogant” and “confident” mean the same thing. :rolleyes:

In other words… don’t twist words, december. You know what he meant by “arrogant.”

You haven’t proven that Newsweek (or anyone else) is a part of anything. You’re assuming your conclusion again.

And now you’re changing your own topic again… probably because you realize you’ve lost the “anti-American” point, and you want to change your terminology. However, to keep you on your own topic, I’ll just point out that dissent is not the same as being anti-American.

When you learn to stop equating the two, you might just get somewhere in this discussion. Until then, you’re just hijacking your own thread.

191

An example of what happens when you throw around extremely loaded accusations which are fine in your individual judgement. The short version: Couple accused of child pornography. Charges were baseless, case thrown out of court. Their children were taken from them over five months ago and have still not been returned. The couple has been ordered to undergo psychological examination and rehabilitation as if they were guilty and they STILL are being told they have to jump through more hoops to get their children back. No proof of any wrongdoing, just a “judgement” on the part of a guy in an Eckerd’s, a couple of investigating officers, and a DA’s assistant who got the indictment through a Grand Jury. You remember Grand Juries, those wonderful bodies that inspired the quip “A DA could convince a Grand Jury that a ham sandwich was responsible for the murder of Abraham Lincoln.”

Enjoy,
Steven

192

Obviously I was unclear. I’ll try again:

My point is not just that the suppression of dissent is un-American, but that dissent is not merely permitted but necessary to the country and the duty of every American, in order to prevent what has already happened in America: the slow encroachment of apathy and/or unquestioning compliance upon the judgment of the voting populace, allowing the unscrupulous and the untrustworthy to prevail unchallenged. And if that dissent is on some occasions misguided, that is still preferable to blinkered complacency.

193

Try this formulation, then:

Accusing Americans of anti-Americanism is un-American.
december, it would serve you very well to acknowledge that judgments that disagree with your own can be at least as valid as your own, and are not per se evidence of moral inferiority. If you really were honest enough to give others the same credit you give yourself, this thread would not exist.

194

“Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of…”

195

Well said, Doctor Goo Fee. Given that that period was the best period in the history of the U.S. (as noted by the OPer), what better way to return to those thrilling days?

196

Mmm, I clean forgot about the House Un-American Activities Committee. That POS continued to twitch until 1975.
This BS just never goes away, does it?

197

Here are some possible updates on the “arrogant blunder” for the ages.

From this article:

"Iraq’s huge political differences erupted into the open in the capital yesterday as tens of thousands of religious protesters called on the US to leave the country even as Washington’s closest protege, Ahmad Chalabi, told a press conference that “the moral imperative is on the US to provide leadership and the Iraqi people will accept it”.

On the second Muslim day of prayer since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, thousands of worshippers poured out of the mosques and marched through Baghdad’s predominantly Sunni al-Azameyah neighbourhood. They chanted both anti-American and anti-Saddam slogans."

And from this one on the city of Mosul:

"[Last week] residents waited for American forces to rush into Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, to keep the peace.

Instead, the city turned into the most violent place in all of postwar Iraq.

By this morning, at least 31 Iraqis were dead and more than 150 wounded in clashes, including 17 believed to have been killed by American marines in disputed shootings. Looters had destroyed the city’s most treasured buildings. American soldiers had been attacked, and one had been wounded.

In the midst of the vacuum, new leaders emerged, and mosques became the center of relief efforts. There is still gratitude toward America here, but the events of the last week have fed deep suspicions of the United States."

198

Untidy.

199

What was that about freedom being “messy” again, Mr. Rumsfeld?

200

Please, Mr. December, go sit in a corner and let these Gentlemen debate.
Mtgman

  • You are not allowed to set the framework in which I respond with your leading questions and false dilemmas.*
    Elvislives
    *When have you ever admitted that you were wrong? *
    Mtgman
    *Simply put, I abhor your attempt to create a new form of bigotry with which you can attack your political opponents. *
    salior
    *What dream world do you live in december? *
    ElviaLives
    *december, is it really unclear to you? The question being posed, and seemingly evaded, isn’t about your knowledge of facts but about your judgment. *
    Eva Luna
  • I’m unaware of any admission of error on his (Dcember’s) part.*
    rjung
    Aw, c’mon, guys, give december a break – given his advanced age, it’s to be expected that his viewpoints have long since calcified to rock-hard immobility…smile. *
    Eva Luna
    Well, age is no excuse, if that’s even the issue. Even my extremely stubborn 86-year-old grandfather has been known to accept a new viewpoint here and there.
    blowero
    If only we could get Matlock on our side…
    ** blowero    *
    What’s annoying is people hiding behind the flag and refusing to listen to reason.
    Mtgman
    . Just understand that your judgement is NOT fact and if I ever see you try to pass it off as such, especially condemming someone as “anti-American” then I’m going to call you on it. Hard.
    Avalion
    In other words… don’t twist words, december. You know what he meant by “arrogant.”
    Elvis1ives
  • If you really were honest enough to give others the same credit you give yourself, this thread would not exist.*
    ** Doctor Goo Fee**
  • “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of…”*
    tomndebb
    Well said, Doctor Goo Fee.
    ** pantom**
    Mmm, I clean forgot about the House Un-American Activities Committee…
    This BS just never goes away, does it?

Note: These comments were lifted from parts of page four of this discussion. No attempt here has been made to distinguish between American posters and foreigners and other imposters.
And , as a matter of observation, these ankle-nipping comments were oft times the only unconvoluting construction made in their posts.