'Bomb Texas': The psychological roots of anti-Americanism

With this past autumn's discussion in Washington over what to do about Iraq there arrived also the season of protests. They were everywhere. In the national newspapers, Common Cause published a full-page letter, backed by "7,000 signatories," demanding (as if it had been outlawed) a "full and open debate" before any American action against Iraq. More radical cries emanated from Not in Our Name, a nationwide "project" spearheaded by Noam Chomsky and affiliates, which likewise ran full-page advertisements in the major papers decrying America's "war without limit," organized "Days of Resistance" in New York and elsewhere, and in general made known its feeling that the United States rather than Iraq poses the real threat to world peace. At one late-October march in Washington, there were signs proclaiming "I Love Iraq, Bomb Texas," and depicting President Bush wearing a Hitler mustache and giving the Nazi salute.

You really need to have a Victor Davis Hanson ping list. This is just so perfect.

Tenure has ensured that tens of thousands of professors who work nine months a year cannot be fired for being unproductive or mediocre scholars, much less for being abject failures in the classroom.

Universities exist to provide employment to men who cannot make a living with their hands or their heads. - Florence King, attributed to her father.

"Some of its fumes, though, still linger in the doctrines of radical egalitarianism espoused by postmodern relativists and multiculturalists and by now instilled, in suitably diluted and presentable form, in several generations of college and high-school students. Hence, for example, the regular put-down of George W. Bush as a "Manichean"--for could anything be more self-evidently retrograde than a view of our present conflict as a war of good versus evil, or anything more simplistic than relying on such "universal" arbiters of human behavior as freedom, pluralism, and religious tolerance?"

I heard a Q&A forum between college students and a sitting supreme court justice on C-SPAN the other day. The justice quoted a line in the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
He then posed the question, "What is the operative word to you?"
Her answer, "the word 'We'." She reasoned that these principles only apply to the US, and "who are we to impose on others?" arguement. A 'live and let live" attitude.

This is a perfect example of moral bankruptcy. To say this is to believe that "there are no absolutes" (which is the ultimate in hypocracy because this claim is an absolute).

Sure, saying "live and let live" to another American is called freedom. But try saying "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" do not not apply to a starving North Korean, a cuban citizen, a moslem condemned to death because she committed adultry, or any dissenter in Iraq or Iran.

"Live and let live" can mean "live and let die or be enslaved" depending on who you are talking to. "Who are we to impose ourselves on other?" We are Americans, that's who. I hold that freedom is superior. We live this truth every day. The evidence is seen in our past and present. The US is the world's only "superpower" because it is the product of our principles and values. Who are we to deny others of our values?

Freedom must be promoted wherever we do not find it. Period.

Excellent article, it deconstructs the guilt and envy angle of anti-Americanism perfectly. But I have a problem:

Predictions of quagmire in Iraq/Kosovo/Afghanistan can't be ignored.

Eleven years and thousands of bombing runs later, we are about to ramp the war with Iraq back up. We have kept troops in neighboring countries and patrolled their airspace constantly. Call it what you will, we've never stopped being at war with Iraq, and if it has been ten cheap years of war in casualty terms, those are still our tax dollars fueling the planes and buying the bombs.

Bush visited our 5,000 troops still in Kosovo six weeks before 9-11, and two and a half years after they were posted there. They are still there.

The Russians "conquered" Afghanistan in three days. A decade later, they slunk home. Until Karzai can leave Kabul with less than a company of Marines, it ain't over.

I'm no peacenik, but as they say in the NFL - don't run before you catch the ball.

But in the year since the slaughter of September 11 there emerged an unpleasant body of sentiment that has little or nothing to do with the issues at hand but instead reflects a profound and blanket dislike of anything the United States does at any time.

Exactly right. The hypocrisy of these people! After the terrorist attack, they pledged to support GW and expressed sadness for the victims and their relatives, yet they continue to endorse the terrorist's arguments, and are opposed to any measures needed to guarantee the kind of military and intelligence capabilities we need to defeat them.

I'm certain that their campaigns to undermine GW and the war efforts have just started.

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