Anne Applebaum--A Columnist Who Doesn't Get It
Why They Don't Like Us Would You Follow the Country That Bungled Iraq?
By Anne Applebaum Tuesday, October 2, 2007; A19
"Why do they hate us?" Much ink has been spilled over the past six years in attempts to answer that question. By contrast, not enough attention has been paid to what is, in some ways, a more perplexing conundrum: Why don't they like us as much as they used to?
"They" in this latter question are our very, very closest allies. By this I don't mean France, or even Canada, democracies that are part of the Western alliance but that have never particularly warmed to the idea of American leadership, whether political or cultural. The French have always been huffy about NATO, and downright nasty about Hollywood; the Canadians have actually formed their national identity around being "not-Americans." No, the more interesting question is why support for American leadership has declined among our traditional friends: Britain, Poland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands.
And it has decli…