I think I've made my own opinion about anti-American sentiment known often enough here. I identify pretty closely with my country even though I hate quite a few of our leaders and I disagree with a lot of our official policy, especially in foreign affairs. Somewhat irrationally, I tend to take anti-American opinion personally, but this is largely because I believe in a lot of our ideals even though our leadership is almost completely fucked up.
People say we 'deserve' to be attacked -- we the civilians & the majority of our soldiers don't, we're not the ones choosing to deploy troops in Timbuktu or other places. The vast majority of us don't have financial interests in other parts of the world that need to be protected. Most of us didn't give a damn about Islam before we were attacked. Most of us are simply trying to survive and prosper the same as any other people anywhere else in the world.
What makes America different is that we do have a strong sense of nationalism, and our politicians & their support staff have been carefully manipulating that for decades to present an illusion of solidarity to the rest of the world, and to garner support from Americans, even though everyone knows that we're divided on foreign affairs. Our politicians & other people of power have learned a lot about manipulating people in the years since Vietnam. I do think it's important to make a distinction between the American leaders and the American people -- since most of the latter do not even understand that they are being manipulated. If people want to blame us for being stupid, that's fine, but don't blame us for policy decisions that we don't make directly.
And like any other group of people, we have our smart, rational people, we have our trolls, and we have our idiots. While some minority of people say with conviction, "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out!", it's mistake for anyone to infer that most Americans support putting this into action as any kind of real policy.
Personally, I'm of the mind that we should back off our military presence throughout the world. I think Europe and the Middle East and Asia should fend for themselves for a while. I think the U.S. needs to concentrate on improving its condition at home, and it should respect the rights of other people to solve their own problems. At the same time, I can't help but to think that the political situation in the world will become more unstable. Who else is willing and capable enough to step into the vacuum to provide military intervention if it's needed? If the U.S. backs off, I don't want to hear about people in other countries begging for U.S. intervention to end some civil war or to overthrow some dictator. The world can't have it both ways, folks.
