sirenianshores

18DoughtyStreet.com, Britain’s online equivalent of Fox News, has launched a two minute viral campaign to combat what they perceive as growing ‘anti-Americanism’ across Britain and Europe. They need not have bothered - ‘Anti-Americanism’ is a politicised term that has more to do with perception than actual reality. It’s most common function is to any deflect criticism of the Bush administration by conflating the actions of the government with the country itself and its people.

Despite what the people at 18 Doughty Street would have us believe, most of us Europeans actually like America - we just happen to hate the bunch of crooks who are running the country. The same way if somebody over here happened to criticise the Italian government, nobody would be accusing them of ‘anti-Italianism’. That would have about the same level of ridiculousness.

While few people would deny that America has not been an enormous force for good in the world, its record is from perfect, and is littered with a string of disastrous and unjustified wars - from the latest one in Iraq, through to Vietnam and as far back as the campaigns which all but wiped out the Native Americans. It should be self-evident to all but the most blindly nationalistic that America is not always correct in it’s actions and consequently should not be free from criticism. Furthermore, any such criticism should not be lazily dismissed as ‘anti-Americanism’.