I'm slightly critical of America on the war in Afghanistan, as regular PPRuNers will know.
(My worries were that the response was not adequately focused against the guilty - I'm entirely with BEagle in believeing that "bin Laden and Al Queera or whatever it's called deserve all that's coming..." - but I'm less comfortable with the legitimacy of a war with the Taliban - I hate them too, mind you, and will be pleased to see them fall. I'm also worried that military action has been allowed to drag on too long, and that a shorter, sharper, more focused and more intensive campaign would have been better than this Kosovo-type slogging match from a
PR and public/international support point of view. Finally, I don't think enough has been done to bring the moderate Arab/Islamic world onside, nor to correct the misapprehension that this was a US act of retaliation and revenge for 11 September.)
All that said, I'm a great fan of the American people. Kind, generous, moral, hospitable and honourable as they are. And Arizona is especially great, with particularly wonderful Americans living there. The crack about Phoenix is just plain wrong - though why they didn't continue on to Tucson, or over to Santa Fe is a bit of a mystery! We may joke about America's MacDonalds culture and all the rest, and may sometimes poke fun but I wonder whether the average American is any more or less stupid than the average Brit. Comparing CNN and Sky News, or the Sport and Sun with US tabloids is an unprofitable and depressing game for either nationality, I fear.
It may be that some key sections of US society have a broader education than comparable sections over here, or it may not, but I think that a legitimate criticism is that Americans do tend to be a little insular and inward-looking, and that Erik Everhard's post, while over-the-top and insulting does contain a grain of truth.
Major Mad asks us to: "name one European or Israeli that has ever attacked the US." almost proving the point. Terrorism existed before 11 September, and other targets have been attacked by equally evil men.
Moreover, 11 September itself is more complicated than is comfortable. However much we'd prefer to reduce it to good and evil, those who perpetrated this atrocity were driven by what they perveresely saw as 'right', and there are underlying problems which must be addressed if the problem of global terrorism (and especially Islamic terrorism) is to be addressed.
I'm not entirely sure that supporting Israel's state terrorism against the Palestinian authorities (rather than against the Hamas terrorists responsible, who 'deserve everything they get') is either just or, more importantly, wise. In the long run, peace and reconciliation can probably only be achieved by encouraging Israel to disgorge the territory it took by force of arms in 1967, removing illegal settlements and allowing a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital - while simultaneously offering guarantees of the security of Israel's remaining territory. Watching the IDF targeting Arafat and the Palestinian police, and killing more 15 year-olds is an undeifying spectacle, and to pretend that Israel's brutality and intransigence on land for police isn't partially responsible for the depressing cycle of violence is short-sighted and foolish.
What a depressing world we live in....