Russia and its president also are unpopular in many countries of the world. But criticisms of that nation and its leader are sharpest in Western Europe where many citizens worry about overdependence on the Russian energy supply. For instance, despite sharp declines in favorable views of the U.S. in France and Germany since 2002, Russia's image in those countries is no better. (...)
Favorable views of the U.S. are in single digits in Turkey (9%) and have declined to 15% in Pakistan. Currently, just 30% of Germans have a positive view of the U.S. – down from 42% as recently as two years ago – and favorable ratings inch ever lower in Great Britain and Canada. (...)
While opinions of Americans have fallen in most Western European countries, they remain generally positive. In every Western European country surveyed, far more people express positive opinions of Americans than they do of the U.S.; in Germany, for instance, 63% say they have a positive opinion of Americans compared with just 30% who rate the U.S. positively. In fact, in many countries, the American people get better ratings than does the U.S. generally. Latin America is a consistent exception to this rule. In this region, Americans get about the same ratings as their country; either both are mostly favorable, as in Venezuela and Peru, or both are quite low, as in Argentina.

The US Embassy in Berlin is a near total failure in its efforts to engage the German mass media so as to reach the largest possible German audience. The American taxpayer is being under-served by his or her representatives in Germany. Frankly - the public diplomacy officials at the US Embassy in Berlin ought to send Eric Staal half of their annual paychecks - because he just did more to engage the German people in 2 minutes than they have done in the past year.

We have our hands full with the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban. Why do we have to go against Iraq right now? Are you really sure that containment has failed?

The recent presidential elections in France have been a renewed opportunity for most of the American MSM to display a permanent feature that is to be found in many articles reporting on our country: an obsession which translates into an incessant set of criticisms about how France is run, particularly its economy. Above all, the 35-hour workweek, the 5-week paid vacation and the free and high-quality healthcare and educational systems seem to be particularly unbearable to those many journalists, columnists and reporters who also seem to have trouble understanding why the labor market is regulated, why workers are entitled to social rights and protections, and even sometimes are allowed to go on strike.

# Perceived American religiosity.
# Perceived American obsession with guns and violence.
# The death penalty.
# The perceived excess and superficiality of American capitalism and (non)culture (i.e. fat people, the super rich, SUVs, fast-food, M-TV/hip-hop culture, Hollywood, corporate scandals, buy-outs and "excessive" profits.)
# Perceived social inequality in the United States (i.e. amerikanische Verhaeltnisse, poor Americans are starving and freezing to death or at least struggling with 2-3 jobs and no health insurance while the rich live it up. Perception that America has no social safety net or a woefully inadequate social safety net.)
# Perceived American unilateralism/exceptionalism (i.e. Iraq, Kyoto, ICC, Guantanamo)
# Perceived American "hurrah" patriotism or "hyper" patriotism (i.e. flag-waving).
# Perceived American paranoia/overreaction about terror and obsession with security and the "war" on terror and the perceived willingness of Americans to sacrifice key civil liberties (the Patriot Act has become a favored target) and take extrajudicial actions involving torture, renditions, etc.
# The perception that the Bush administration controls (or at least dominates) the media and can somehow intimidate media into following the party line. The perceived view that there is a lack of diversity of opinion in US media and that FoxNews, talk radio and blogs are the menacing conservative vanguard of what all US media are becoming or have already become. (i.e. US media are "gleichgeschaltet" or in lock-step.)
# Anything that casts a negative light on the US military (i.e. Abu Ghraib, trials of US troops, bombings or killings of civilians real or imagined).
# Anything that casts a negative light on the Bush administration.
# Iraq is a disaster-quagmire-catastrophe-debacle perhaps unparalleled in human history. Iraq = Vietnam = defeat and humiliation for America, the US military and Bush.
# The perception of the US as an imperial hegemon out to expand its global power and military-industrial complex while using democracy as a convenient (yet false) excuse to do so. Oil = blood = Halliburton = war.

Opinion polls cite widespread dismay with the Iraq war, our dog-eat-dog social model and the arrogance of an imperial superpower that places itself above international law. But behind the surveys about "why they hate us" lies a reservoir of goodwill waiting to be tapped among foreigners who would prefer to see the United States succeed rather than fail. This love-hate melange has perpetuated four modern myths about transatlantic relations that deserve to be debunked.
1. The French hate us:
There is scant evidence to suggest that exploiting anti-American attitudes wins elections. During the French campaign, Sarkozy was often derided by his Socialist opponents as "an American neoconservative carrying a French passport." (...) In Germany, where anti-American views have hardened in recent years, Merkel has not suffered because of her support of the United States. Indeed, she has steadily increased her popularity with high-profile visits to Washington. (...)
2. Europeans look down on the American way of life:
Young Europeans are more eager than ever to work and study in the United States. A brain drain from France and Germany has sent some of their best and brightest to the United States. (...) When I spoke last year with about 50 Germans studying at MIT and Harvard, not one of them expressed a desire to return home. They all wanted to live and work in the United States, where, they said, opportunities are far more abundant.
3. "Old Europe" no longer matters because China and India are the future:
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, Europe supposedly lost its relevance. Not true. In fact, Europe and the United States still act as the twin turbines of the global economy, accounting for 60 percent of all trade and investment flows. Americans invested five times as much money in Germany last year as they did in China, and U.S. firms in total have poured four times as much money into tiny Belgium as they have into India. Europe provides three-quarters of all foreign investment in the United States, creating millions of American jobs.
4. Europe loves only Democrats:
Most Europeans loathe George W. Bush, and his departure from the White House will be cheered in capitals around the world. But that doesn't mean that Europeans want a return to the kumbaya-ism and humility evinced by President Jimmy Carter and the early years of the Clinton administration, when the United States failed to lead in stopping genocide in the Balkans.

The motivations behind the powerful intellectual support of the war should be analysed in retrospect, and not only because the hopes that were invested in the Iraq War were so disastrously disappointed. We should be concerned, for one, with monitoring the success rate of our prognoses but more importantly, with exploring the argumentative basis of our war confidence in the West. Only then will the "war of ideas" between the Western public and the Islamic world that the essayist Paul Berman been demanding since 2001, seriously begin.
It's already started, here and there – even though it's a particularly internal conversation in the West, for example on the Internet site www.perlentaucher.de, where a noteworthy debate (English version here) on universalism and multiculturalism has been waged in the last few weeks, to which Ian Buruma, Timothy Garton Ash, Pascal Bruckner and Necla Kelek have contributed. But the discussion is concerned principally with the inner constitution of a liberal society, and not the civilisational conflict between the West and the entire Islamic world that the Iraq War has plunged us into, whether we like it or not.

But in this field in particular, the rubble of the Iraq War has to be cleared away before we can carry on with a modicum of credibility. Nobody should take pleasure in the fact that authors like Wolf Biermann and György Konrad, essayists like Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht and Karl-Otto Hondrich, "liberal hawks" like Paul Berman and Michael Ignatieff, and even considered observers like Ralph Dahrendorf and Herfried Münkler were wrong on so many counts. In fact, many of those named, and Konrad and Gumbrecht in particular, should be credited for admitting their mistakes. (...)

Defeats are known to give rise to reflection, and lessons are best learned from stories that don't end the way we expected them to. A lesson from this recent history is, the more expansive the historical analogy, the more likely it is to be misleading. Another lesson is: little bits of conventional wisdom can be helpful. Two examples: If you're planning to occupy a large country, take a lot of troops. And if you're going to dissolve an army, be sure to keep the weapons and give the men work.

I noticed the same pattern as Seibt did. I think part of the explanation is that the hawkish intellectuals who supported the war engaged not with the serious critiques from war opponents, but with the goofy arguments of the weird left. They then built their case for war on a refutation of those silly arguments, rather than a carefully-reasoned argument why the war itself was necessary or desirable. "Because the anti-American, anti-Semitic wacko left is strongly against this war, and because I despise those people, the war must be a good idea. How can those people, whom I've spent my life criticizing, be right about anything?"

Germany’s transformation from Europe’s sick man to its most stalwart performer is by now well entrenched. So sanguine are German executives about their future that many brush aside fears that a slowdown in the United States could knock their export-led recovery off track.
The American consumer may still be the main engine that drives the global economy, but Germany’s advance — it has been the world’s largest exporter of goods for the last four years — is propelled by other sources. It is one more sign that the rest of the world does not depend as much on the American economy as it once did.

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary promised £7 tickets to the US and Southwest Airlines, the American pioneer of no-frills travel, signalled its intention to start flying to the UK. The prospect of cheap flights from London to New York will revive memories of Freddie Laker’s ultimately doomed challenge to the flag carriers 30 years ago. However, liberalisation of air travel through last month’s “open skies” agreement promises to revolutionise transatlantic travel. Ryanair, Europe’s biggest low-cost carrier, yesterday unveiled plans to offer flights to Baltimore, Rhode Island and New York for as little as 10-12 euros each way, but the service is likely to face stiff competition.

IN COUNTRY after country, anti-Americanism is the magic potion for political weakness. If you’re the president of Upper Slovobia and your popularity is sinking, take a swig from this bottle. You’d be surprised how effective the concoction is. Countless polls, elaborate or basic, confirm that Yankee-bashing works. To name the most obvious example: Five years ago, Gerhard Schroeder, Germany’s chancellor then and Vladimir Putin’s hired hand now, refloated his political wreck of an election pumping this noxious liquefied stench.

"When you've got absolutely nothing, reach for Munich" said blogger Robert Farley, speaking about the propensity of American right-wing ideologues to use the historical analogy of Munich 1938 to punish their adversaries on the left and promote perpetual war as the only solution to geopolitical conflicts. It's always Munich 1938 in the bizarro-world of right-wing America; every perceived enemy is Hitler and every individual who advocates diplomacy over war is a Chamberlain.

1. Defensive denial/Complete identification. The anti-anti-American becomes so fed up with the supercilious tone of European anti-Americanism (or so afraid of "giving the other side ammunition") that he defends U.S. policy even against spot-on critiques.
2. Tit-for-tat. For every flaw identified by the anti-American, the anti-anti strikes back with an analogous shortcoming of modern European societies. Don't get me wrong; a bit of tit-for-tat is satisfying, and sometimes administers a needed corrective. But it rarely illuminates causes and nature of anti-Americanism, and often destroys dialogue.
3. Contempt. Just as many European anti-Americans do not care to remedy the defects they mock in American society, many anti-anti-Americans are motivated by a mirror-image of contempt for Europe. On both sides, these critics don't want to understand; they want merely to score points and bolster fragile egos.