From: Alan Minyard

Comparing the United States to the USSR? You do not have
any idea of what you are talking about.

It is a shameful statement, but he is in line with a long tradition of
irrational European hostility to America. Jean Francois Revel's book
"Anti-Americanism" has a good rundown. Excerpts from the Introduction:

"Within some democratic countries, a subset of the population, some political
parties and the majority of intellectuals, were prone to adhere to Communism,
or at least support similar ideas. For this crowd, anti-Americanism was
rational, since America was identified with capitalism, and capitalism with
evil. What was less rational was their wholesale swallowing of the most
flagrant and stupid lies about American society and foreign policy, and their
careful spurning of accurate knowledge of the Communist systems. An irrational
anti-Americanism, with a blind rejection of factual and verifiable information
about America and its antidemocratic enemies, was even more paradoxical among
those sectors of Western opinion—the majority, in fact—who feared and
rejected Communism.
......
The European Right’s anti-Americanism stems fundamentally from our
continent’s loss during the twentieth century of its six-hundred-year
leadership role. Europe had been the powerhouse of enterprise and industry,
innovator in arts and sciences, maker of empires—in practical terms, master
of the planet. It was sometimes one European country, sometimes another, that
took the lead in this process of globalization avant la lettre, but all more or
less participated, either in concert or by turns. Today, by contrast, not only
has Europe lost the ability to act alone on a global scale, but it is compelled
in some degree to follow in the footsteps of the United States and lend
support.... As for the anti-Americanism of the extreme Right, it is fueled by
the same hatred for democracy and the liberal economy that goads the extreme
Left.
..........
So unfolds a scenario that repeatedly is to be found underlying geostrategic
and psychological relations between Europe and America. To begin with,
Europeans entreat a reticent United States to rush to their aid and become
actively involved in, even sponsor and coordinate, an effort to save them from
a desperate situation that they, the Europeans, have created. Subsequently,
America is transmuted into the sole instigator of the conflict. Needless to
say, should America prove successful, as she did in the all-embracing challenge
of the Cold War, she receives but scant acknowledgment. But should the affair
turn bad, as it did in Vietnam, America bears all the blame.
........
The illogicality at base consists in reproaching the United States for some
shortcoming, and then for its opposite. Here is a convincing sign that we are
in the presence, not of rational analysis, but of obsession. The examples I
mentioned were from the sixties, but others can easily be adduced from much
earlier and much later, revealing a deeply rooted habit of mind that hasn’t
altered in the slightest over the years. The lessons that can be drawn from the
last three decades of the century, which hardly reflect badly on the United
States, have apparently made no impression.
As an hors d’oeuvre, let me offer a particularly flagrant manifestation of
this mentality. Until May of 2001, and for some years now, the main grievance
against the United States was formulated in terms of the hyperpower’s
“unilateralism,” its arrogant assumption that it could meddle everywhere
and be the “policeman of the world.” Then, over the summer of 2001, it
became apparent that the administration of George W. Bush was less inclined
than its predecessors to impose itself as universal lifesaver in one crisis
after another—especially in the Middle East, where the conflict between the
Israelis and the Palestinians was heating up alarmingly. From then on the
reproof mutated into that of “isolationism”: a powerful country failing in
its duties and, with monstrous egocentricity, looking only to its own national
interests. With wonderful illogicality, the same spiteful bad temper inspired
both indictments, though of course they were diametrically opposed.
.......
Alain Peyrefitte, in his 'C’était de Gaulle,' quotes the general as saying:
“In 1944, the Americans cared no more about liberating France than did the
Russians about liberating Poland.” When one knows how the Russians treated
Poland, both during the last phase of World War II and then after they had made
a satellite of the country, one cannot but be dumbfounded by the effrontery of
such a comparison, coming from such a source.
.....
Inevitably then, today as yesterday and yesterday as the day before, a book
about the United States must be a book dealing with disinformation about the
United States—a formidable and perhaps Sisyphean task of persuasion, doomed
to failure, since the disinformation in question is not the result of
pardonable, correctable mistakes, but rather of a profound psychological need.
...."

You can read the complete Introduction to the book at:

http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/...nam_intro.html


Chris Mark