to Matthew Bird

Submitted by Sidda (United States), Jun 14, 2006 at 10:29

Matthew, I cannot speak for all Americans, however, I think I speak for most when I say that we have absolutely nothing against the common person from the UK! There are so many different people here and so many opinions on just about everything. But, I believe that most Americans see the UK as an ally, even if there are sometimes disagreements on various policies. After all, our historical ties are very close. Like you say, nobody ever reports on a positive; negative is what makes the news.

You are correct in pointing out that there are various organizations here in the US which could be considered as anti-Semitic. They do not speak for the average American or the American government. We have Christian churches here who have divested from Israel. The people I know personally who belong to those denominations are not in agreement with those policies. I am sure it is the same in the UK.

I honestly don't hear any bashing of the UK here in the US. I wish, however, I could say the same thing about the British (and European in general) media towards the US. We really take a beating in your media (especially the BBC and the Guardian) and I believe that we are treated very unfairly. No attempt seems to be made to really get at the truth, just to forward a certain ideological agenda. However, I must say that about our own media here also! And in all fairness, we often do not articulate our positions or explain ourselves very well. We are not very good at communications sometimes, especially this current administration.

Most of us realize that the political elites and media do not speak for the average Brit any more than our elites and media speak for the common American. And please know that we are very appreciative of the steadfast support given to us by the Brits and our other allies in both Afghanistan and Iraq, although I will admit that we do not express it often enough. We are not so good sometimes when it comes to diplomacy; I don't really think it is our strong area.

We are also woefully ignorant of other cultures; I don't know why that is. Maybe when our ancestors all came here we decided we didn't want to think about the "old country" any more wherever it was! I don't know! For as many places in the world the US is into, the average American is really isolationist at heart. We just want to hunker down and do our thing and forget about the rest of the world. It really is a contradiction! We are being dragged kicking and screaming into engaging the rest of the world because of this war against Islamic extremists. Even so, many want to ignore that anything is different! Those a among a few of our faults.

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