Americans are people too

On my virgin visit to America in the mid-1990s my first stop was Time Square. I had a strong sensation – like many tourists before me – that I had already been to New York City. In a certain sense I had, courtesy of the films of Woody Allen and numerous other directors. I came to know New York better a few years later when I worked briefly in the World Trade Center for an organisation that researched drug abuse and HIV/AIDS. This gave me a particular familiarity with the Twin Towers, a familiarity I would soon share with millions of television viewers around the world as we all watched, over and over again, the towers being hit and then collapsing. Even today watching on YouTube, footage of the planes smashing into the towers is both spectacular and appalling. The attacks grabbed global attention in a manner unrivalled by any other event this century and, along with the assassination of JFK and the landing of the first man on the moon, have become one of the most dramatic televised moments in human history. These iconic events demanded attention because of their uniqueness, significance and possible consequences. Undoubtedly these events also received so much attention because they either occurred in America or, in the case of the moon landing, were carried out by Americans.

The familiarity of outsiders with the US can lead to both insightful criticism and contempt. However, it is frequently a false familiarity as the America we see most regularly in the media is sensationalised whereas the ordinary, or even a representative picture, is not that well portrayed.

The Twin Towers were one of the most recognisable monuments to American wealth and power. In the days following their destruction, much was written about the symbolism of targeting these particular buildings. French provocateur Jean Baudrillard wrote that the attacks on the Twin Towers joined "the white magic of movies and the black magic of terrorism." Although Baudrillard was criticised for trivialising the attacks and there is more than a hint of racism in his statement, his words very effectively hit on how both Americans and non-Americans have fantasised about the destruction of America's might. In countless dramas millions have rooted for Americans to triumph against adversity, and, more than occasionally, get their comeuppance. Sensational attacks on the World Trade Center existed in the celluloid world long before 2001: the Twin Towers were the target of Islamic terrorist attacks in the 1982 film Right is Wrong, they were partly destroyed by aliens in the 1996 movie Independence Day, and damaged by meteor hits in the 1998 film Armageddon (footage that was removed when the movie appeared on American network television in 2002).

While not literally the centre of world trade, the Twin Towers were important sites for the exchange of global finances and ideas. They were largely targeted for their metaphorical symbolism in America's most famous city. The reality was that, along with symbolising the power of American capitalism, they were a tourist attraction and a shopping mall. The sheer variety of the workers and visitors in these buildings reminds us of just how indiscriminate both the 9/11 terrorist attacks and some people's reactions to them were. Many will remember the Le Monde editorial "We are all Americans now", but I also recall the Guardian headline that bespoke an entirely different reaction: "A bully with a bloody nose is still a bully." What disturbed me about this second response is that the strikes on the Pentagon and Twin Towers largely killed airline passengers and office workers, not the military or business leaders of the US. Individuals were killed; the US government was certainly not cut down by these attacks. If anything it was emboldened.

This duality of admiration and antagonism has been a long held aspect of the world's fascination and familiarity with the US. Thomas Jefferson wrote in the 18^th century that "every man has two countries, his own and France." His words were written at a time when France was at the forefront of struggles for human rights and the quest for greater knowledge. By the mid-20^th century it was America, not France, that was likely to be people's second country. A fascination with America existed well before it became a great power, a fascination that was often tinged with hope or fear. America has long been seen as humanity's "last best, hope" and, conversely, as a nation whose garrulous and uncouth culture was assiduously inserting itself across the world. Thus America is perceived as the land of inspiring politicians and innovators like Washington, Franklin, Gates and Obama but also as the home of dumb and her cousin dumber (cue: Reagan, Bush Jr, Sarah Palin and Miss Teen South Carolina). Of course we should not forget the supply side of this equation. America receives a disproportionate level of attention because of the reach and muscle of American media and American corporations, and because of the power and influence of its government.

Given the ubiquity, power, and influence of the US it is hardly surprising that it is the subject of significant hatred and even the target of violence. What was surprising was the reaction of many Americans. From the president down, they seemed unaware of just how much anger and resentment their country inspired around the world. No better example of the level of American insularity and naivety exists than President Bush's statement soon after the attacks, "Why do they hate us when we're so good?"

There is any number of answers to this much asked question of why people hate America. American meddling in the foreign affairs of other nations has caused many unfortunate outcomes. Fault can easily be found with US government policy since WWII in East Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. The tragedy in Afghanistan today is partly the result of America's support and then neglect of the destructive forces that it helped unleash, as vividly outlined by Steve Coll in his excellent book on Afghanistan Ghost Wars. Many experts argue that America's great enemy since 2001 – al Qaeda – was assisted by the US in the 1980s in the struggle against their mutual enemy of "godless communism". Those looking to fault the American government can also find much to dislike about American domestic politics from the behaviour of the Tea-Party inspired Republicans who argued the US should not raise its debt ceiling (and thus dangerously politicised the payment of the government's foreign debts) to lax environmental policies at the federal, state and local level.

Given such behaviour, when four planes were hijacked and thousands of people, largely Americans, were killed, many people's feelings of sympathy were mixed with thoughts that America was getting what it deserved, that Goliath had finally been paid back by David. The word "blowback" quickly entered the popular media, a term first used by the CIA to describe the unintended negative consequences of covert actions, in a report on the agency's involvement in the overthrow of the Mosaddegh government in Iran in 1953. These mixed emotions about 9/11 were at times crassly expressed as people began to tire of the American media's coverage of the tragedy. At other times they were laid out in more complex terms as the details of America's relationship with bin Laden was probed. The editor of Le Monde summarized his view of the world's reaction: "'What's happening to [Americans] is too bad, but they had it coming.'" I remember finding such sentiments objectionable at the time as they conflated people with governments.

The Bush administration's ill-conceived decision to invade Iraq undoubtedly boosted latent antipathy towards America. This action also poisoned much of the good will that existed towards America after 9/11. Global opinion surveys clearly show this rising negativity: in 2003 99% of Jordanians surveyed by Pew had an "unfavourable" attitude to the US, as did 71% of Germans. One of the tragedies of the Bush era was how the administration managed to turn legitimate concerns into mockery so soon after the events of September 11. Bill Leak's clever cartoon satirising the "Axis of Naughtiness" is one of many reminders of how badly the Bush administration botched the arguments against bin Laden, terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Instead of maintaining a broad opposition to these threats, Bush's cowboy talk and exaggerated claims about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein deflated public support for the fight against terrorism.

Much of the negative opinion was not only directed at George W. Bush and his administration's policies but also towards the American people themselves. Responding to various waves of criticism, the Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson penned a piece which opened with the line "We Americans are people too." The article adopted a rather lecturing tone about the need for Europeans to be more thankful for America's global leadership. Nonetheless Samuelson does make the very valid point that you can criticise the policies of a foreign government without hating its people.

The inability to separate the American government from its people seems one of the more obvious flaws in much commentary about the US in the Bush era. In conflating the American people with their politicians, and likewise with their government's actions abroad, ironically foreigners are taking American exceptionalist thinking on board. In other words, many non-Americans buy into the mythology that the American government is, more so than other democracies, a "government of the people, by the people, for the people". It is common for peoples around the world to see their own leaders as unrepresentative chameleons while being drawn to talk about American presidents as symbolising their people. A president Bush apparently symbolises an ignorant nation; a president Obama means Americans now care about the world's opinion. The situation can be partly explained by the heavy emphasis on personal biography in American politics and the tendency of presidential candidates to link their personal narrative with national mythology. It is also perpetuated by an electoral system that offers a direct vote for the political leader as opposed to the Westminster system where members of parliament, not voters, choose the leader.

The questionable idea that the American political elite exemplify their entire country extends to the realm of foreign affairs. In most countries, foreign policy making is considered an elite pursuit executed by highly educated experts. In the case of America, foreign policy is often criticised for being too reflective of the ignorance of the people while at the same time being hatched and directed by a cabal of elites. This seemingly contradictory critique sees America as having an approach to foreign policy that might be dubbed "populist imperialism". Not surprisingly, the presidencies of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan have done much to fuel such opinions. My point here is not to defend the foreign policies of such presidents, far from it, but to point out that for criticism of politicians like Reagan or the policies of the recent Bush administration to be effective, it must move beyond caricature. It must be able to provide strong evidence either revealing the special influence the American people have on their politicians or the same peoples' unique ignorance. Such evidence may exist, but little effort is made to find it. Instead such debates proceed on the basis of assertion and stereotyping.

This brings me to anti-Americanism, a topic I have been researching and writing on since the 2000 US presidential election. Anti-Americanism is a peculiar word: we have no equivalent for any other nation. Anti-Finlandism is incomprehensible and even anti-Frenchism is unknown in the English language. It is tempting to declare anti-Americanism oxymoronic, as it is surely impossible to hate a whole nation and all of its people. Some have suggested the word is merely moronic: a boo word crudely employed to silence criticism. In a searching essay in 1990, the French scholar Marie-France Toinet asked "Does Anti-Americanism Exist?" and according to Josef Joffe "most Europeans will argue that anti-Americanism does not exist". Sartre foretold these responses with his riposte in 1948 that "I am not anti-American. I don't even know what the word means." However, many political words lack a certain basic logic, neo-conservatism being an obvious example. Nonetheless regular use and circulation gives them meaning and importance. The word anti-Americanism cannot be waved away like a naughty child. It is here to stay and thus requires discussion and analysis.

I believe the best way to understand anti-Americanism is as a collective prejudice, hence the point of the "ism" at the end of this unusual word. Although admittedly anti-Americanism is a prejudice that is, in most cases, far less pernicious than many other prejudices. There is a long tradition of stereotyping the worst or most gauche aspects of America as the norm. In a reflective moment, Oscar Wilde commented that the "English people are far more interested in American barbarism than they are in American civilization". The origins of anti-Americanism are most sensibly traced to the Jacksonian period (the 1820s and 1830s) in American history. Just as expressions of anti-globalisation existed before the late 20^th century, forms of anti-Americanism existed before the 1820s. However both anti-Americanism and anti-globalism have a key period that was crucial in shaping their tropes and language. In the case of anti-Americanism, it was the Jacksonian period when the American frontier dramatically expanded (often in rough and ready circumstances) and Europe experienced an equally dramatic surge of interest in America. As a result there emerged a greatly increased volume of travel writing about the new nation. This literature and commentary, widely read at the time by a public looking for ways to understand this new force in the world, gives a great insight into perceptions of America. In this key period, Europeans were forming their views about the nature of America and Americans. The results were often not pleasing. Most of the commentators of the day painted Americans as unsophisticated, boastful and financially untrustworthy. It is my contention that this anti-American outlook – with its focus on America as an uncouth nation - reached its apex in terms of influence in the Jacksonian era. Negative commentary in the years following tended to play off the tropes and stereotypes about Americans that were established in this era.

One of the most widely read travel books of the Jacksonian era was Frances Trollope's Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832) which lampoons the rough and ready eating habits of Americans on the frontier, decrying the "total and universal want of manners, both in males and females". A decade later Dickens, in American Notes and The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit added to the existing picture of the ugly American by satirizing Americans for their "worship of the almighty dollar" (a phrase he coined), for being swindlers and for their love of national and personal puffery. Dickens' America books regularly highlighted how every other American seemed to have some trumped up title as General this or Professor that; and how people constantly told you how great a man such and such was and how wonderful America was. Proclaiming the US to be "the greatest country in the history of the world" is of course a long standing favourite line of American politicians. At her best Trollope offered a searing critique of American hypocrisy over slavery and Dickens very effectively pinpointed the contradictions in America's claims that it was an egalitarian society. However, both helped create and perpetuate anti-American stereotypes by portraying behaviour in the backwoods and frontier as typical of the whole. Further, their commentary was as often snobbish as it was insightful.

America is frequently a nation of opposites: the home of much of the global pornography industry and of the most prominent anti-pornography movements; the Mecca of fatty food diners and the birth place of the raw food movement, and the home of a tradition in many ways diametrically opposed to that of Jacksonianism. Wilsonian America stands against the inward looking populist tendencies of the Jacksonian tradition. Named after Woodrow Wilson, (president of both Princeton University and the United States), this tradition champions the promotion of human rights, international laws and institutions, and world peace. However, it can also be viewed as naïve, preachy, and culturally tone deaf. French Prime Minister Clemenceau at the Versailles Peace conference said talking to Wilson felt like "talking with Jesus Christ". Elsewhere he said "God himself was content with ten commandments. Wilson modestly inflicted fourteen points on us…of the most empty theory." Graham Greene's Quiet American offers in many ways a Wilsonian archetype in its protaganist Alden Pyle (at least as often seen by foreigners). Quoting book knowledge and proclaiming his wish to bring democracy to Vietnam, Pyle is introduced as a naïve American abroad; however, his idealism is soon shown to be stained by a deadly imperialism that involves the secret importing of military equipment and the bombing of civilians to create pro-American ferment in Vietnam. The most quoted line of the novel about Pyle (and implicitly about the US) is: "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused." In a case of life imitating art, George W. Bush quoted this line in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in 2007. Bush went on to question Greene's thesis that Indochina would really have been better off without American intervention given what Bush said we know about "'boat people,' 're-education camps,' and 'killing fields.'" This is a fallacious argument as violent American intervention was in part responsible for the rise of Pol Pot and the refugee crisis at the end of the Vietnam war. What Bush typifies here is a general unwillingness by recent American politicians (and much of the American media) to admit any foreign policy mistakes by America in the present or in fact at anytime in the past. Whenever Obama has made mild references to possible errors of judgement, or has reflected on how American policies may have stirred up foreign resentment, he has been repetitively attacked as unpatriotic. From the outside, this inability to admit mistakes and apologise looks suspiciously like the continuation of what Senator Fulbright called the "arrogance of American power."

What frequently most bewilders and annoys foreigners is when Jacksonian brutality and Wilsonian pronouncements are employed simultaneously. The Jacksonian tradition is inward looking by inclination; however, if drawn into a conflict as in 1941 or 2001 this tradition unleashed a strong belief in crushing America's opponents. Bush drew on both Jacksonian and Wilsonian traditions to create a toxic cocktail of policies that were rightly criticised as self-righteous, delusional and deadly. We can see this bewildering combination of ideas in his promise to "ride herd" on the Middle Eastern peace process, or his claim in his second inaugural address in 2005 that the ultimate goal of US foreign policy was "ending tyranny in our world", or in his government's assertion that it was bringing democracy to Iraq. However, as much as Bush deserves forceful criticism, much commentary on him and his government misfired because, rather than examining the details, commentators and media treated Bush as a half-wit and wrote off all of his government's pronouncements as being insincere. Further, as evidenced by the Daily Mirror headline in 2004, the American people were often dismissed as just plain "dumb" in the Bush era. Admittedly it was hard not to be very angry at the policies of Bush and Cheney. Bush's election and re-election were tragedies as far as I was concerned. However, name calling, abuse and anti-Americanism seldom wins a political argument. A case in point is the Guardian newspaper's ill fated 2004 "Operation Clark County" letter writing campaign. Guardian readers were encouraged to send a letter to a voter in Clark County, Ohio trying to convince them to vote for Kerry not Bush. The three sample letters the paper published – from Richard Dawkins, John Le Carré, and Antonia Fraser – could all be described as abusive. The operation's lack of success became apparent as soon as the Guardian website began posting responses from Clark County. Arranged under the headline of "Dear Limey assholes", the responses ranged from "Real Americans aren't interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions" to regular references to 1776 and Britons as "yellow-toothed snobs". The ultimate results of course were not in the tea-leaves but in the voting records on November 2, 2004. Al Gore won Clark County in 2000 by 324 votes; Ralph Nader garnered 1,347 votes. In 2004, Bush won the county by 1,620 votes. Of the 15 Ohio counties Gore won, Clark was the only one Kerry lost.

National stereotypes are hard to avoid, and have some utility. However, when they become overused touchstones for analysis, they can easily reflect certain prejudices about foreigners. Americans have a unique word to describe this negative outlook towards them and their nation: anti-Americanism. It is a word that partly exists because foreigners have been so drawn to America and had so much to say about it (with much commentary being extremely negative). At the same time Americans themselves frequently overreact to criticism, showing a tendency toward "annoying patriotism" as de Tocqueville called it. This attitude leads to much commentary on America being falsely called anti-Americanism. Smug foreigners and self-righteous Americans have often shed more heat than light on the question of what makes the United States and its people tick. The reactions to September 11, 2001 were yet another chapter in this three-centuries-old story of fascination with the US. The rights and wrongs of the US were debated widely. Given the unexpected and dramatic nature of the attacks, and the emotional responses to them, it is no surprise that many of the books written in their immediate aftermath have dated badly. At the time, and since, there was much hyperbole about the epoch-changing potential of the attacks. Distance from these events gives us the opportunity to reflect on them more soberly. Ten years on from 9/11, I am struck by the fact that these events did not "change everything" as some claimed. Rather they amplified certain existing tendencies. Finally, the Bush administration's use of these attacks to justify an ill-planned war in Iraq severely dented the credibility of the US in the world. However, the global enthusiasm generated by the election of Barack Obama shows that, despite America's many failings, the world holds a great reservoir of hope for the US to be true to its much pronounced ideals.