Overfed, oversexed, over here

That's what the English, only jokingly, said about American soldiers stationed in Great Britain during World War II. That type of complaint is friendly criticism based on actual individual experiences with Americans, whether such criticism is sensible or not can be tested and argued, and often the person making friendly, but sometimes severe, criticisms of "all Americans"often changes his mind by meeting different kinds of Americans. That's useful criticism. That is, both sides can learn from criticizing each other through such friendly criticism. But, there's another kind of criticism of America. There is a more extreme and clearly much more common form of current left wing, fashionable, and worldwide, anti-Americanism, let's call it "incurable" hatred of all things American. I mean to say that there is an anti democratic hostility out there against us that is nothing less than an article of hateful faith, and it's incurable. There has been a warped international anti American, essentially communist, political persuasion that has become gradually so ingrained over the past fifty years that there is nothing we can do or say that will change the minds of those who hold to such anti-American hatreds to the point of making the loathing of America into a warped humanist religion, of sorts.

Of course, the left wingers in our own country think that the thing to do, to make the whole world love us, is to reverse U. S. foreign policy, presumably by electing a slate of anti-religious, anti-military, anti-free enterprise, and one-world, anti-American, narrowly focused, political prostitutes, who would cut and run in the Middle East. They yearn for the good old days of the Carter administration, without seeing that his weakness in standing up to tyrants' tests of our resolve to defend ourselves has made him the unwitting "godfather" of the mess in the Middle East.

Unreasonable beliefs about the goals of the United States are not linked to specific actions that we take. Those who have suspected and hated us since WW II will continue to hate us. For example, nearly 80 percent of Indonesians approved of the U. S. disaster-relief operation in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in 2004. Yet anti-Americanism in Indonesia actually grew during the same period? What this means is that a shift in American foreign policy is unlikely to reverse or even to affect the tide of decades old anti-Americanism. It seems that anti-Americanism is on the rise, because nowadays the world sees that America is willing and able to smite our enemies in their won backyards. The cold hard fact of American power, combined with a readiness to use it in defense of American interests seems enough to damn the United States, even among our "friends?" But, when American power has been marshaled for the benefit of the world (as in WW I and WW II) our sacrifices for "Old Europe" is either forgotten or our motives for helping save Europe from both wars of aggression and post-war starvation, becomes reinterpreted as "American Imperialism." And here's another thing to consider, the American left wing, socialist press and TV commentators, such as the New York Times, and CNN, actually tend to be harsher in their judgment of fellow Americans than are many of our European critics?

The power of incurable (by reasoned debate, or any action we might take) anti-Americanism, and its propagandistic influence is not merely the ideology of fools (the "Dixie Chicks" come to mind), but even people of great talent and intelligence can be possessed by its demonic power. For example, the British playwright Harold Pinter, winner of last year's Nobel Prize for literature gave us a dazzling display of incurable anti-Americanism. In his acceptance speech in Stockholm, Pinter declared: "The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them." To me, saying that few people have actually talked about the United States is silly. With the help of CNN, CBS, NBC, BBC, and the New York Times, no nation's actions, real or imagined, has been subjected to such microscopic investigation, or been a victim to such popular falsehood, as those of the U. S. government and its agencies. Pinter knew his audience. The Nobel Prize in literature, or "peace" in particular, routinely goes to the most rabid anti-Americans. By the way, if someone were to challenge Pinter's wild allegations of American wickedness, by recalling hundreds of instances of the compassionate use of American power, Pinter is ready and waiting with an answer. As he put it in his Nobel Prize speech, "You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide, while masquerading as a force for universal good." Thus does perhaps the most famous living dramatist in the English-speaking world, a man who has just been awarded the highest tribute that the republic of letters can grant, seize the occasion to attack the very power (American power, in two world wars) that assures the freedoms on which his entire showy career has been built.

Any rational review of America's impact on the rest of the world, political, cultural, economic, even environment, would conclude that, on balance, the United States has been overwhelmingly a force for good. But none of that matters to those afflicted with obsessive incurable anti-Americanism. Such lifelong haters of America will preach that our great country is the ultimate cause of the world's evils, until the day they die, no matter what?

Finally, vicious modern anti-Americanism in Europe might just be a more "polite" form of an ancient European disease, anti Semitism. Our enemies are anti-Israel, anti-Judaism, and anti-Christian. We'll take a look at that later.

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.