Talk:Anti-Americanism/Archive 9

message: The US did not invade Vietnam; its forces entered the country at the request of the recognized government of South Vietnam. However, it did launch raids into neighborhing countries. However, since their intent was to influence the conflict in South Vietnam (not establish control of those countries), they probably don't qualify as "invasions". AdamRetchless 02:06, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Vietnam invasion

message: I removed the poll from the introduction.  The paragraph equivocated to make a fallacious comparison in numbers.  I removed it and put the link at the bottom.
:A survey conducted in 2003 on behalf of journalists in 10 countries explored anti-Americanism, and revealed a huge gap between how Americans view themselves, and how they are viewed by others.  This gap has widened dramatically during the presidency of George W. Bush.  96% of Americans believe that people in other countries want to live in the United States.  By contrast, an average of 19% of people in other countries said that they would move to the United States if they had the opportunity.  Details of this study are available at http://www.cbc.ca/news/america/ .
Basically, 96% of Americans believe that people outside the US want to live in the US doesn't mean that 96% of Americans believe that 100% of the world wants to live in the US.  I don't know how you compare the 19% and 96% figures.  19% seems like a lot of people want to live in the US, actually.  Do any other countries have a higher figure?  That might provide an interesting comparison.  Daniel Quinlan 04:03, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Removal of poll from introduction

message: I just want to say I have a pretty big problem with a lot of the phrasing in this article, and it is well exemplified by the recent addition about movies.  A lot of the "anti-Americanism" is explained by referring to what "Americans" think, but this is used very sloppily to refer to totally different groups of people and then implicity identify them.  The "usual American answer" to the lack of imported movies is whose answer?  If you mean most Americans, I don't agree.  I think most Americans like and appreciate a good foreign film, as witnessed by the enormous success of, say, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and may have an overall positive impression of French movies (I'm not sure, but are you?).  The complaint about subsidies could not possibly be made by most people, who have no idea how the internals of the movie industries work.
But maybe it means the American movie industry's complaints.  If not, what on Earth does this extracted and paraphrased portion mean: "Americans answer that Americans are not interested in seeing unknown foreign actors.  This explanation is often considered a sign of arrogance and (or?) provincialism."  I don't think I need to explain the myriad problems with this.  (It reminds me of this Onion article (link may not be persistent).)  If so, this is a very narrow group of people with an unusual niche in American society who should not simply be identified as "Americans".
Or maybe since we're describing anti-American sentiment, the claim is that it results from other nations irrationally confusing different groups of Americans and lumping them together.  This is probably true in many cases, but we should say so explicitly rather than present a confusing explanation that makes no sense.
Comments welcome. -- VV 00:14, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Sloppy phrasing and terminology

message: Cut from article:
:It is misleading to place together under one label all people, ideologies, and attitudes opposed to various US policies or habits, particularly since America's people themselves hold very diverse values.
This is a POV. Whose is it? Let's identify the proponent of this view. For example, Josef Kolejprff said, "It is misleading to place together under one label all people, ideologies, and attitudes opposed to various US policies or habits. Besides, just because I dislike certain aspects of American society or government doesn't make me 'anti-American'. I am a genuine reformer and true patriot." --Uncle Ed 15:00, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The term "western" is frequently used not in a geographical context - which would mean that the sun would have no place to rise at - but in a political context, where it labels countries that support democracy and capitalism, cf. Western world, Western culture. Get-back-world-respect 12:25, 26 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: The term "Anti-American"