The Falseness of Anti-Americanism by Fouad Ajami

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Society
September 10th, 2003 • 10:55 pm

I find it mind-boggling that such an article even gets published (in Foreign Policy). Instead of trying to address any of the valid issues raised by people both inside and outside the US, the author simply pits the US (the good) against the rest of the world (the bad, i.e. mostly France and Arab countries, of course) and accuses the latter of wanting to have it both ways — of embracing the “wonderful inventions”, technology, culture, etc. of Americans, and being anti-American at the same time. Of embracing modernity and loathing the purveyors of this modernity at the same time. As if all modernity was American. As if all “wonderful inventions” were American inventions. As if criticizing the policies of the current US administration was the same as rejecting modernity. Everybody in the same bag. Neat.

The article goes farther. It resorts to personal attacks on specific public figures. It accuses the Germans of wanting “to use anti-Americanism to absolve themselves and their parents of the great crimes of World War II”.

This is unbelievable stuff. It’s childish. It’s shameful. And it’s written by an American university professor, and published in an “award-winning magazine of global politics, economics, and ideas” put out by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Good grief. No wonder one gets the distinct impression of a “dialogue of the deaf” these days.


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