Anne Applebaum has a column in the Telegraph that punctures one of the enduring myths about 9/11 that is being pimped really hard by the left and by a malleable mainstream media. The fairy tale goes something like, "America squandered all the good will that sprang from the 9/11 attacks. Their actions since have (insert any dire statement here)." As Applebaum points out, the so-called goodwill was completely gone from sight within hours of the attacks. It had dissipated before the rubble of the World Trade Center had stopped smoking.
Nevertheless, I think it's worth looking back at what people really felt on September 11, 2001, because not everyone felt the same, then or later. Certainly it's true that, five years ago, Tony Blair spoke of standing "shoulder to shoulder" with America, that Iain Duncan Smith (remember him?) echoed him, and that Jacques Chirac was on his way to Washington to say the same.
But it's also true that this initial wave of goodwill hardly outlasted the news cycle. Within a couple of days a Guardian columnist wrote of the "unabashed national egotism and arrogance that drives anti-Americanism among swaths of the world's population". A Daily Mail columnist denounced the "self-sought imperial role" of the United States, which he said had "made it enemies of every sort across the globe".
That week's edition of Question Time featured a sustained attack on Phil Lader, the former US ambassador to Britain – and a man who had lost colleagues in the World Trade Centre – who seemed near to tears as he was asked questions about the "millions and millions of people around the world despising the American nation". At least some Britons, like many other Europeans, were already secretly or openly pleased by the 9/11 attacks.
And all of this was before Afghanistan, before Tony Blair was tainted by his friendship with George Bush, and before anyone knew the word "neo-con", let alone felt the need to claim not to be one.
The dislike of America, the hatred for what it was believed to stand for – capitalism, globalisation, militarism, Zionism, Hollywood or McDonald's, depending on your point of view – was well entrenched. To put it differently, the scorn now widely felt in Britain and across Europe for America's "war on terrorism" actually preceded the "war on terrorism" itself. It was already there on September 12 and 13, right out in the open for everyone to see.
This myth, that somehow the US and George Bush squandered all that goodwill is complete nonsense. People with any kind of memory at all should be able to recall how vitriolic European opinion toward the US was well before 9/11. This is just the latest excuse in a long line of justifications for that irrational dislike. That our own left also parrots back the same nonsense is unfortunate but not really surprising. They have long shared common attitudes with Europe. Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: Sister Toldjah says not to miss the comment section under Applebaum's article. The hornets have come out to play. There are also a few good comments that are worth digging for:
I honestly don't believe that your average British person feels the hostility that the British media so obviously have towards America. I've been outraged time and again in the last two weeks by the BBC etc saying. "9/11 was America's fault for not preventing it by listening to the security experts that warned it could happen". Thank God for America, it's the only country that is standing up to this grave threat.
Posted by Jeff Potter on September 12, 2006 11:49 AM
