Uh David, the entire article you link to is about the "Korengal River valley in Afghanistan’s northeastern province of Kunar". This is the tiny stretch of no man's land that improbably connects Afghanistan to China.

How is this an example of the failure in southern Afghanistan?

Talk about a template!

In fact it is a positive sign that we are trying to harass and deny insurgent safe havens even when they are far, far away from Kabul.

The situation in Afghanistan is difficult, but I simply do not trust the NY Times to report on a contemporary war, unless I recognize in the byline those few names that have proven reliable.

For example, John F. Burns. He hates war, and has plenty to say that is critical of the US and NATO efforts, but he also understands the difference between killing civilians in the heat of battle, and deliberate slaughter after the fact.

He won a Pulitzer for reports such as this. Also he understands geography.

That certainly explains some of the feelings.

But how then to explain the rabid anti-Americanism of the 80's, when we were no different than the USSR, when we supposedly had painted a target on Europe with our nukes? Back then, the complaint was remarkable similar: just let the Soviet Union have its rightful place in world affairs, and all the hatred would go away.

I am not, of course, comparing the EU to the Soviet Union. Furthermore, I am only talking about the irrational, over-the-top hatred, not the ordinary resentment that comes from genuine policy or cultural differences.

And yes, there are irrational US feelings about Europe...

I have been trying to find an article I read in the past 1-2 years that discussed the history of European anti-Americanism that long predates WW I and II. So far, no luck.

Instead, I have tagged two items for the "Tips From Our Readers" section here on Atlantic Review. One discusses anti-Americanism as an attempt to reassemble Marx's theories from the ashbin of history. The other is a book review of two books. It is the second book, L'ennemi americain: Genealogie de l'antiamericanisme francais by Philippe Roger, that was the basis for the article I remember reading.

I don't mean to focus only on French anti-Americanism; indeed, I think that prior to WW I the French view represented the European view as a whole.

In the 19th century, European experimental science was much more advanced than American. Nevertheless, there was still a tendency to derive testable conclusions about the real world from assumed first principles, rather than actually collecting data. In Roger's book there is a wonderful story of how the European journals of science described the flora and fauna of the American continent as weak or diminutive. Supposedly, nothing grew to full size.

"Georges-Louis Buffon, an eighteenth-century French scientist, was the first to promote the widespread idea that nature in the New World was deficient; in America, which he had never visited, dogs don't bark, birds don't sing, and—by extension—humans are weaker, less intelligent, and less potent. Thomas Jefferson, infuriated by these claims, brought a seven-foot-tall carcass of a moose from America to the entry hall of his Parisian hotel"
(from a book review of an English translation of Roger's book)

This is the part I am taking from memory: confronted with increasing evidence that some things in the American continent did indeed grow large, the academe modified it's position: everything in American was either too large or too small, over-developed or stunted, reflecting an unnatural imbalance that was assumed to exist in the New World.

Today the theory is that everything American is just too large -- gigantism. And indeed our houses and trucks (and perhaps certain body parts) are at times ridiculously large.

So I thought that was a funny story.

Perhaps the Europeans could share some funny stories about crazy American ideas of Europe.