Anti-Americanism is not directed at the American people but at the intrusive and self-interested policies of the various US Government as you describe earlier in the article.

It is a bit too much of a knee-jerk response to claim anti-Americanism to avoid facing some home truths or avoid indulging in some reflection. It is the same rhetoric used by some to diminish the rights of Palestinians by claiming anti-Jewish when criticising Israel. Clearly not 'all' the Israelis agree with government policy in the same way Americans may not condone all presidential decisions.

Americans have been vocal too in their opposition to the invasion of Iraq - we just don't hear about it as much.

It is not right to label a people for the acts of their government but I don't think any rational people engage in blanket generalisations. The Right Wing Conservatives are the loudest in the US (eg. The Tea Party) but there are also growing vocal calls for health care reform and the like. The media tends to like a colourful story and the Right are fodder for that in the US. However, Americans are like any other nation of people with a variety of views and beliefs.

Wilsonian idealism? Much of the motivation for Woodrow Wilson's actions was his racism. Wilson was born in the antebellum south and reflected their racist attitudes.

Black people in Wilson's time were generally not well educated. However, there were no formal barriers against their promotion in the US Civil Service. When Wilson was elected president he decreed that black people in the Civil Service could rise no higher than clerks.

Wilson introduced the term self-determination to diplomatic parlance. He advocated that the components of the Austro-Hungarian Empire form separate national entities on the basis of their ethnicity. One result would be that Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians and other 'inferior peoples' would be less likely to want to come to the US.

Wilson was a highly educated man who was president of Princeton University, and Jackson was a self-educated frontiersman. Wilson was a cultured bigot, and Jackson was an uncultured bigot.

"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."

How long ago was this article written? Is he a Lowy Institute stooge?

The 'hope for the US' based on the election of Obama died nine months after he was elected when people realised and still do that he was then and still is captive to the forces that have run the US government for the past 8 years, the infamous Bush cabal of liars, mass-murderers and terrorists who the US people accept as the new American paradigm in 2011. The writer appears to admire such people while still expecting the world, in the waning decades of US empire, to garner some respect for a country that through its actions, almost 200 wars it has started since it moved the British off the top rung of the ladder, deserving nothing but condemnation.

Imagine what they could have done in that time.

Such condemnation in a real sense is now its legacy as we have seen in the continual acts of aggression towards the US in and around the 780 bases it owns around the world. What a hate target they represent along with the countries that have thrown in their lot with the US, Australia being a prime example. Eleven years of contributing nothing to the development of Afghanistan which, given three more years of the US and it will all be back to where it was before the British, before the Russians and before the US Coalition of the Willing (Subservient), where it has been happily surviving since time began, living a life of the people’s choosing, with their own values and laws.

Trying to make Afghanistan conform to the distorted image of the Zionist-controlled US media, right-wing Christian zealots on every corner, morally and financially bankrupt, is a patently forlorn hope even for those in the current US administration with their fingers stuck in the honey pot.
The militarists.

Good points, David f.

In the early twentieth century, in some western US mining towns, there are reputed to have been signs saying "No Bohunks Allowed": 'debate' centred on whether or not eastern Europeans were non-white and therefore to be barred from employment in favour of whites, i.e. Anglo-Celts.

The pro-American vs. anti-American dynamic is a very powerful one, but it's by no means the only political dynamic in the world today, and never has been. There is a multitude of dynamics, Palestinians vs. Israel, Sunni vs. Shia, Muslims vs. unbelievers, Turks vs. Kurds, Turks vs. Greeks, Greeks vs. Macedonians, Kosovars vs. Serbs, Russia vs. Georgia, Sydney vs. Melbourne, Gulgong vs. Mudgee, Darwin vs. Alice Springs, Berri vs. Barmera, etc. etc. Freud's description of the narcissism of small differences springs to mind.

Some of these dynamics are partly consonant with others, or 'overlap', but each have their own driving factors.

Once we realise this, we have to face the possibility that, not only may some parties be 'better' than the Americans, that some degree of anti-Americanism may be justified, but that some parties may be a lot worse, and that it may not be justified. It's a complex world, we have to make informed judgments on major issues rather than be content with a stock knee-jerk reaction, which takes on a sort of religious, them-us/100% evil-100% good, aspect, a lazy way to do politics.

Understanding the world is hard work. The either-or, Manichaean approach, and conspiracy theories, are much easier, they provide a spurious closure on debate, but get us nowhere. Sorry, Arjay, no offence :)

Joe

The only oxymoron on display here is unbiased leftie discussion.

America bad ... it's enemies good ...huh?

Really when will these people show some balance.

The US is the logical result of the philosophies of democracy developed over a few thousand years. But because America doesn't toady to the latest leftie bunchs ideas and the proven failure of the accompaning socializst philosophy America's leaders sins are paraded as a failure of the democratic system and lauded as the end of the world's attempt at democracy.

How shallow, short-sighted and a thoroughly ignorant assumption.

The few thousand years of democracy's development and it's ability to withstand deviations and it's temporary appropriation by many ill-informed or deceiptful individuals is testament enough to that.

America and it's version of democracy will outlive the socialists mantras.

As opposed to the oxymoron of unbiased Righty discussions.

Everyone has a bias, it is about discussing the reasons behind them. No goal I'm afraid.