America is hated because its the worlds bigger brother and other countries are jealous? This is only partially true imho. I've said this before, but pre 9-11 (or perhaps I should say pre-Bush?) America was quite well-liked here in Western Europe at least. I can only safely argue from my Western European perspective, so that is what I'll do.
People did generally think America was a bit backward with regards to social justice, stuff like the US prison system, capital punishment and comparatively huge differences between the poor and the rich (obviously any country is gonna tend to argue from its own viewpoint and consider itself the norm and thus policy-wise the most reasonable middle ground) but aside from such differences people here always considered the Americans as their friends and as sharing the same fate.
The thing about ignorance was always the stereotype of Americans over here, but people didnt hate them for it so long as the ignorance didnt affect the rest of the world in any negative manner. It should be noted that relative ignorance of the rest of the world is something common to all large countries, Britain and Japan have similar issues. Even France and Germany do, albeit to a lesser degree.
Since the 21st century however there have been some differences that got pushed into the spotlight and have somewhat alienated us from eachother.
First there is the election of George Bush, most of Europe typified Bush as an unintelligent man dead-set on further increasing social injustice, they almost unanimously agreed that Gore was a far better candidate. The victory of Bush (and the manner in which he achieved it) did stir some disbelief with European media following the elections, but so far it was nothing too bad.
Then there is 9-11, a terrible black day in history and all of Europe was deeply shocked and strongly sympathised with the American people. Most of the world did in fact, and the decision to invade Afghanistan in the U.N. was (iirc) unanimous, which is a very unique thing indeed, all the nations of the world agreed something had to be done about the perpetrators of the attacks on the twin towers and the pentagon.
Around that time the American administration started rubbing countries the wrong way though. One thing that agitated people was the use of terms such as "the axis of evil", a grand and rather judgemental self-righteous term lacking any subtlety and nuance not seen since the Cold War when Reagan carelessly labeled the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" only later in his term to realize that maybe the Russians weren't necessarily 'evil' at all in the prelude to the fall of the Berlin wall.
Another example of the perceived lack of reasonable nuance of the United States is when Bush stated "You are either with us or against us". This black-and-white announcement went around the world as a threat towards all who would not unconditionally follow the United States and noone considers itself anyone's lapdog who will unconditionally follow commands without applying thought first and forming its own opinion. In terms of the brother analogy coined earlier this thread, the strong big brother said: "You better do what I tell you to or else." It is no surprise that this harvests more animosity than it does servitude.
There are other things too, like how the US considers itself above the law. Prisoners of War were shipped off to Guantanamo Bay and declared not to fall under the Geneva Convention (which was maintained until July 2006). The U.S. which had in the past been the main proponent of an International Court of Justice started considering its citizens immune from the court and iirc even made invasion/infiltration plans (into the Netherlands) to cover the eventuality of an American being tried for crimes against humanity or whatnot. All human beings are equal, but some are more equal than others, is what seems to be the message.
A new phase of disillusion was Iraq. Suddenly the US aimed its arrows at Saddam Hussein. We've seen weapon inspectors that were getting more and more of a free hand in doing their jobs in Iraq, helped largely by US pressure and threats. I myself was much in favour of keeping the threat of invasion real to force Saddam into cooperating. Then much to the disbelief of many Europeans including myself the weapon inspectors had to leave, not because the Iraqis removed them from the country or were hindered from doing their work, but because the US was preparing to attack Iraq in spite of the weapon inspectors finding no clues whatsoever and receiving increasing liberty in searching for aforementioned clues. I'm asking you to look at these observations as described all by themselves and consider that it might seem like the weapon inspectors were merely a charade and that the US had long decided already it was going to attack Iraq regardless of what the inspectors might find.
Most of Europe was willing to go along in this war if it were a legal and supported law under the rulings of the United Nations. The United States however, failed to convince the United States including France and Germany of the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction and went along with the war by itself (with Great Britain). This caused more than a few raised eyebrows but what was worse was the childish manner in which the US for a short while reacted to France and Germany. There were occasional mentions in the news of the US renaming French fries to freedom fries and owners of German-made cars finding their headlights smashed and silly stuff of the sort. Whilst it doesnt very directly damage France or Germany, it does very much suggest that the United States does no appreciate and respect that some countries might differ from them in opinion. The fact that Weapons of Mass Destruction were not found and that France and germany were right not to have been persuaded by the vague photos Colin Powell showed in the U.N. is actually largely besides the point.
I could go on much longer probably with things such as Europeans not understanding Bush being re-elected on the background of the war in Iraq and the national debt development or the US standing up the world by not signing the Kyoto protocol or the US waging war in an attempt to combat terrorism but doing absolutely nothing with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which is broadly seen as an important cause of anti-American terrorist sentiment in Islamic nations. (That is one of the things in foreign relations where United States intervention is really needed, since it'll be hard for anyone else to mediate in this conflict.) But, I'm getting bored so I won't go into that. I'll mention one other thing however that Western Europeans find hard to sympathize with, religion. Europe has secularized in a high tempo in the past decades, this was never much of an issue in its foreign relations, but since 9-11 religion has taken to the foreground again and a political leader invoking God is something that'd be unheard of hear, though it spawns more arched eyebrows than disbelief. I'll add to this btw, that in my perception anti-Americanism is already much in decline over here, people mostly just don't want anything to do with its foreign policy and wars.
Well, it remains to be seen whether anyone is going to read this, but if someone does, I hope they'll agree that the negative attitude to the US the past 6 years is at least in part due to actual actions taken and things said by the US. Having said that I submit that as the Dutch saying goes "tall trees catch more wind", being the major superpower in the world it is only natural that it'll be the target of a large share of criticism and anger, both just and unjust.
"We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice."
and i was so looking forward to getting you a 12yo boy for your birthday Fireborn...guess i'll have to just pick one out of Faldon
