Anti-Americans had me in tears on the Fourth of July

I've just moved from New York City to London, into a little house with a little garden - and it seemed a good idea to throw a Fourth of July barbecue. After years of cramped Manhattan parties, craning out of our air-conditioned apartment window to catch a glimpse of fireworks, I was determined to have the traditional outdoor feast.

My British flatmate loved the idea. "It's a themed welcome-back party," she exclaimed. She emailed invitations to our friends. I bought gourmet sausages, and then suddenly I panicked. Why would a bunch of Brits, anti-Bush and liberal Brits at that, want to celebrate our most all-American day?

Having lived in London on and off for two years, I've realised that young British people don't like America; in fact, now that Bush is waging his war on terror, they hate it. At a dinner party in the autumn, a boy I'd just met said: "You know, basically bin Laden is right." I began to cry. "America oppresses every other country, and really exploits them just to get richer and, you know, crushes them if they try to stand up for themselves. Bin Laden was telling America to mind its own business; it needed to be told."

And all this when my city was plastered with posters for loved ones missing since September 11; when I had just discovered that a friend had died in the attack. Knowing that one of the charges against Americans was that we "take everything too seriously", I apologised for crying.

Since September, most of my introductions to young Brits begin: "Oh, you're American." Then comes a barrage of questions and assertions about Bush and America's place in the world. If you can clear such political minefields, you find yourself with some friends for life, whose political attitudes about America do not extend to their opinion of individual Americans. "So really," I told myself, "stop worrying. These are your cherished friends coming to the party. You can make it through an evening without talking politics, and everyone loves a camp themed party, especially one with gourmet sausages and mustard in a squeezy bottle."

Then I read the "youth" survey in The Telegraph - a huge majority of young Britons thought America was "aggressive", "inward-looking", "concerned only with its own place in the world" and "not a good example to other countries". Thirty-seven per cent thought Bush was either "poor" or "dreadful". I accosted each new guest - even before they had negotiated the red, white and blue balloons that covered our floor - with interview requests. "Please will you tell me what you really think about Bush and America? I swear I won't get upset and really the more honest the better and I know that we disagree anyway." It worked, but not until we had more than a little drink. What a sight: BA literature students, photographers, actors and people in the theatre - all British but me - piling on to a sofa and talking tipsily about politics.

"Well, America," began someone, nestling into the couch and setting her drink on the table. "I really like America, but I don't think their political system inspires much confidence." "Bush is awful - a total idiot," broke in a boy from across the room, and the polite reserve was broken. "Yeah," nodded another friend earnestly. "Everyone in Britain thinks he's horrible; we were really gutted when he won. We wanted the other guy, what's his name? - Gore - to win."

Turning away from a conversation revolving around an Alabama-style chocolate cake that one of our friends had brought us, someone volunteered: "Bush is a homicidal megalomaniac; he wants to take over the world." My friend's boyfriend added a new sort of conspiracy theory: "The US is the world's biggest terrorist. They think that it is fine to go into other countries and pillage them for their own good, but when other countries attack them they call it terrorism. George W welcomed September 11. Look what it did for him. He didn't exactly engineer it, but he wanted to go into Afghanistan because of their oil resources. Do we really know Osama was behind September 11?" "Where did you hear this?" I asked, trying desperately to be impartial. "Well, I pieced it together," he replied. His paranoia was met with approval from some quarters: "Yeah, Bush wants to use 9/11 to start a world war." He was shot down by the others: "He's too stupid to do that."

I wondered out loud why they were convinced that he was so dumb. The answer was a bit feeble: "Our media has hyped him as stupid." But another friend, while pouring us more wine, came to the rescue: "He always messes up the speeches that are written for him and trips over big words." "He's a knob," yelled a friend as she went into the garden to partake of the sausages.

Finally, I went out into the garden to talk to my friend, the war studies undergraduate, who seems the exception to the rule. "There is less to worry about George W than everyone makes out," he said, lighting my cigarette with an "I Love NY" lighter. "He is a strong hand on the tiller and his responses are not wrong. The Republicans pick people for character traditionally and set up a really intelligent strong team behind them. I don't think we have to worry with Colin Powell and Rumsfeld." This inspired a boy who had been quiet the whole evening - "I am the most British person you'll ever meet," he confided, "and I am completely behind Bush and America. So I guess that I don't have anything to say here."

Probably this, not the paranoid anti-Americanism, was the most shocking comment. But it was a lovely evening, and no one got into an argument, except for two Brits about the NHS. The Telegraph poll said that 63 per cent of young Britons think America is a good friend to Britain, and that is what I most noticed at my party. For all their criticism of America and its supposed militant posturing, here were my friends, bearing wine, celebrating the Fourth of July and staying late, long after we wanted to clear up and go to bed.

After all, these were the same people who had called me and my parents on September 11 and sent flowers to lay at the site.

For his third year of college, my younger boy studied abroad for one year, at Imperial College in London, England...his area of study was engineering, math and science, but he took a world history class, because he wanted to see how world history, taught in a British University, would differ from world history taught in an American University...

I guess he made himself quite the unpopular guy at times, because he constantly was challenging the professor and his point of view...

The biggest point of difference, was when the professor, was going to discuss, where and when Winston Churchill had won WW11...my son raised his hand, and questioned the prof about the roll of the Americans in this victory...what followed, to hear my son tell it, was quite unpleasant...

He and the prof got into it, on many points, many of the students in that class(British students) were actually angry at my son, and some wound up not speaking to him again...seems he dispelled some of their illusions, and they just did not like that...

Oh, my son got an A in the class, not because he touted the profs line, but because he demonstrated he could think, could offer intelligent discourse to the conversation, and was constantly keeping the prof on his toes...

And he made a number of enemies along the way, but as he said, so be it...

["if not for the US, you'd be speaking German"] Alright, but by the same logic we can say it to you.

Not really. Germany never tried to invade the US and it's, uh, far from clear that she would've. The whole European war wasn't really the US's problem in the first place (which is why I sometimes get irritated at the lack of gratitude - I mean really, the US didn't have to join the fighting at all!)

Hence it doesn't mean anything any more, does it?

You're right that it means less than some people try to make it sound. (I agreed with you that the US doesn't deserve "all" the credit.) But I still reckon it means something. The US deserves some credit, I would think, for joining a war not her own, against an enemy which didn't threaten her borders at all, to protect a bunch of foreigners on foreign land, sending thousands of young Americans to die in the process, for no other real reason than that it was the right thing to oppose an evil.

So please, just stop saying it.

No, I don't think I'll stop saying it.

....for all their criticism of America and its supposed militant posturing, here were my friends, bearing wine, celebrating the Fourth of July and staying late, long after we wanted to clear up and go to bed. After all, these were the same people who had called me and my parents on September 11 and sent flowers to lay at the site....

Right. So some 'friend' you are, scooting home from their hospitality to backstab them in your newspaper column. The 'why do they hate us' genre is the hottest thing in US journalism right now, and you're the most repulsive exploiter of it yet, Julia.

Oh well, roll on with the anti-UK posts, everybody. The usual suspects will take the word of a biased tabloid American journalist over the actions of 80 million Britons, as usual.

David, sorry to burst your bubble, but facts are pesky things.

We didn't help you win WWI or WW2--we won WW1 and WW2.

In WW1, the British and French were stalemated in France after three years of a horrible war of attrition, run by idiotic generals on both sides.

I could care less about what happened next, but the truth is, by early 1917, the British were exhausted of men,materials, and most of all, money. Wilson jumped in, not to turn back the Hun, but to save American bankers the $ 4 billion in loans to the Allies that would have turned south if the Allies lost in 1917.

The onslaught of American material and manpower broke the stalemate. Otherwise, you Brits should have been able to finish the job with simply another loan from our bankers. That didn't happen.

As for WW2, you simply did not have the resources to not only invade the Continent while simultaneously sending complete armies,navies and air forces marching across the Pacific Ocean to take Asia back from the Japanese. Our atomic bombs finished the job. And we furnished the Reds with materiel that saved their butts, and killed a bunch of Nazis that would have been after your and my descendants.

But whether we did it for selfish or altruistic reasons, there can be no mistake about this fact--without the United States of America--the world would not have been freed of Nazism, the Japanese Empire, or the Russian brand of Communism.

Sorry if that doesn't fit your view of history.

I, for one, am sick of ungrateful fellow inhabitants of the world criticizing me for saving their hides, after I've paid taxes my whole life to be the world's peacekeeper. There never has been a country like ours, where its citizens paid taxes and gave contributions in money and blood to bring freedom to the world, and not unjustly enslave the countries it occupied to gain at their expense. I'm proud of this country. And if you're offended by that, tough. I make no apologies.

Not really. Germany never tried to invade the US and it's, uh, far from clear that she would've.

Really, the NAZIs and Japanese were allies, remember? The Japanese attacked American territory and who knows where they would have stopped if the war had gone in their favour. If the NAZIs had finished off Britain and the USSR, then don't you think they might have begun to help the Japanese?

The whole European war wasn't really the US's problem in the first place (which is why I sometimes get irritated at the lack of gratitude - I mean really, the US didn't have to join the fighting at all!)

Maybe the USA could have just sat by and let the most blatantly genocidal regime in history take over the whole of Europe. But how long would it have been before the USA and its wider global interests came under attack? After all Hitler wanted a vast Empire, he admired the British Empire. If the Americans had not helped Britain and the NAZIs had still lost, then a large chunk of western Europe would have ended up under Soviet control. Think about the consequences of that for the USA. Also why should Britain have helped America fight the Japanese, after all, we could have just scampered off back to Europe, our home country is in Europe you know.

The US deserves some credit, I would think, for joining a war not her own, against an enemy which didn't threaten her borders at all, to protect a bunch of foreigners on foreign land, sending thousands of young Americans to die in the process, for no other real reason than that it was the right thing to oppose an evil.

I never said that the USA doesn't deserve some credit. You were good allies, apart from the fact that all arms and supplies had to be paid for in advance and you stayed out of the war until the NAZI allied Japanese attacked you.

You also fail to take into account the fact that Britain declared war on Germany because of the NAZI invasion of Poland. Hitler also wanted Britain to be NAZI Germany's ally. He admired the British Empire and the British way of doing things. Edward the VIII was in communication with him as was Lord Halifax. They were ready to sign a pact with him, which he might well have honoured. The point being, if things got too hot, Britain could have always signed a pact. Hitler believed the Slavs were subhuman and killed 10 million of them, thus the USSR could never do that. Therefore, there was an altruistic motive for Britain's resistance to the NAZIs.

Why didn't Britain capitulate? Because of the leadership of Churchill, a man who publicly condemned the NAZI genocide against citizens of the USSR and the Eastern Europeans. He knew Britain could have come to an agreement with Hitler, but he wanted no part of a deal with a mass murdering maniac.

No, I don't think I'll stop saying it.

Then I won't stop saying that without Britain, Americans would be speaking German, or perhaps Japanese.

Yes, it was an effort shared by many, especially the British and the Russians (maybe deservedly so for the soviets). The important thing is that Hitler was defeated and Communism has been demonstrated to be a failure. It disheartens me to see it raising its ugly head in the form of this 'global socialism'. Haven't read the book you are referring to; but have read other articles regarding whether or not Hitler would have gotten the Atom bomb. I personally think he would have if the war had dragged on two or three more years. The Germans themselves are plenty smart enough - just look at what Werner Von Braum did for the American space program. But all of that is irrelevant now. I bet the USSR never paid a cent back to the US. I was unaware that Britain ever agreed to pay back or actually is paying back. As an American taxpayer, that must be a first - seems like we write off bad loans made to other countries all the time. In my opinion, we Americans shouldn't expect any repayment. I personally am very grateful to the British for their sacrifices. The easy road would have been to make peace with Hitler.

From what I've read, the second world war actually started at the Treaty of Versailles, which placed enormous economic burdens on the German people and led to the rise of Hitler. Not to make anyone angry I hope, but the French insistence on heavy reparations certainly sowed the seeds of WWII. Also, my Grandfather and Father, who fought in WWI and WWII respectively, maintained that the US lost interest in European matters due to the French stance on the punishment of Germany after WWI because we knew it would lead to WWII. Be that as it may, it seems to me that America is often wrongly accused of trying to dominate the world. At the end of WWII, America certainly could have completely conquered the world with the sole possession of atomic weapons, a huge and undamaged war industry, etc. Instead, we rebuilt the world, granted independence to the Phillipines and so on. I really don't understand whether the critcs of America really know what they are talking about or are just expressing 'sour grapes'. We're certainly not perfect, but I think America is, overall, the best model for the rest of the world to emulate. That's because, in my opinion, we have a country based on English culture.

I'm sorry, ginle. It's a cruel world, today, no mistake.

You are not alone. Practice calling the toll free TV/ press #s with facts about America, than find some like-minded friends....and come back to FR for a pat on the back. It isn't easy being in the BLUE zone.
www.freebritannia.com, our British Freeper counterpart.

Axis of Allies

To read the papers these days, you'd think Europe and the U.S. were headed for a giant fall over President Bush's "axis of evil" policy. Certainly European critics have earned all of the headlines. But there's another side to this story, which is that much of Europe actually supports Mr. Bush.

We wouldn't exactly call it a silent majority. But it includes some very big names, starting, for example, with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. Since you won't read about it anywhere else, we thought we'd tell you what he said.

"I think that the position Bush has taken is of historic dimensions," Mr. Aznar said last week in an interview with European journalists. "It is comparable to the choice made by Truman, who in the postwar [period] took a strong position against the Russians, and to the declaration that Reagan made at the beginning of the 1980s which defined the Soviet Union as the evil empire."

The Spanish leader added that "I believe that today it is more important than ever that Europe strengthen its ties with the United States: Alone we Europeans will be able to do nothing, not only on the international scene but also even inside our own Continent, as the crisis in the Balkans demonstrated. There are those who want to make an impression by lining up against the U.S., but I do not agree with this attitude." Take that, Jimmy Carter.

Also largely unreported was the comment last week of Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief, who spoke of "overstatements of differences" with Washington. Mr. Solana's remarks were widely taken as a slap in the face of Chris Patten, the EU external affairs commissioner who warned, in widely quoted comments, that Mr. Bush was in "unilateralist overdrive."

Something is clearly getting lost in translation of how Europeans view America right now. When French Foreign Minister Hubert Vendrine calls U.S. foreign policy "simplistic" or German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer accuses the U.S. of treating European nations as "satellites," their remarks make news on both sides of the Atlantic. But when a European leader speaks pointedly in support of America, he's shouting into the wind.

The real story is the battle in Europe between the new politics and the old. It is no accident that those dowagers of the old socialism, France and Germany, tend to produce the U.S. critics, while exponents of a new centrist or center-right politics, primarily British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Mr. Aznar, support Mr. Bush.

Axis of Allies, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 26. Read complete FR thread here.

The onslaught of American material and manpower broke the stalemate. Otherwise, you Brits should have been able to finish the job with simply another loan from our bankers. That didn't happen.

The stalemate would also have been broken by more reinforcements from the British Empire, an Empire of over a billion people. The Germans and Austrians didn't have that sort of population to draw upon. The USA's help speeded up the allied victory, it wasn't solely reponsible for it.

Obviously, we would have had to retreat from the far East in order to destroy the NAZIs. But with the aid of the Soviets we would have eventually beaten Hitler, if necessary using the Biological weapons we were developing in case the war became too desperate. The allied victory would have taken longer without the USA's help and the Soviets would have occupied most of western Europe.

Its true that without the USA's military actions, the Japanese Empire and the USSR would have survived. But NAZI Germany would not have survived.

I, for one, am sick of ungrateful fellow inhabitants of the world criticizing me for saving their hides, after I've paid taxes my whole life to be the world's peacekeeper.

I am sick of Americans telling me that Britons would be speaking German without their help. Also, don't you realise how much peacekeeping the British armed forces have to do, most of our military just spend time cycling between UN peacekeeping missions for goodness sake.

Well, geez........it's too late to say this, it seems, but before everyone goes teeing off on the Brits after reading this............

Look, she was talking primarily to a bunch of college kids.

A) Tell me that there is actually a college in the US or Europe that isn't peopled with ultra-leftist faculty and isn't hell-bent to cram young peoples' heads with this crap.

B) Tell me you wouldn't hear exactly the same thing in Berkeley or practically any US university or college, and

C) Who give a flying fiddler's damn what a bunch of air-headed college kids think?

Add to that a mix of "theater types" (need I say more???)................

I'll wager that the majority of Brits DO remember our close relationship, DO remember WWI and WWII, and DO know that WE give a damn about them. They feel the same way towards us.

It's just as much up to us to educate OUR youth as it is for the Brits to educate theirs.

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