I try not to think about the “good deeds” part of it or the need for being “grateful” for the past. When anti-US thought starts to bother me enough to consider is when the current situation and the near future of the US is damaged by what I might consider an unreasonable widespread social tactic of anti-US cultivation.

What I mean is, what bothers me enough to complain openly about anti-US thought in a society is when it denies the reality of current benefits or realities between that society and the US, and this denial in favor of promoting a strong negative view of the US hurts America in some significant fashion.

Besides South Korea, France in the 1960s is perhaps the best historical example. De Gualle kicking US (NATO) troops out of the country, and the very rude kiss good-bye the French society threw at the soldiers as they left, was a kick in the balls of a very selfish nature - and I don’t primarily mean because the US HAD saved France just some 20 years earlier. I mean because even without GIs in country, the US WAS savING France even while having its ball sack crushed by the French boot. Was France under threat of having the Soviets go around Germany and all the other nations of Western Europe to attack France alone while the US sat back and did nothing?

So, France was playing what cards it could. It knew it would enjoy the ultimate protection of the US, could use the security blanket for its own benefit, and make points with other nations around the world by becoming the biggest non-communist, Soviet ally to rally other nations against “American power”.

That is the type of anti-Americanism that bothers me enough to gripe about. And especially because of how much it also hurts the US position. France today does damage because it still wants to rally other nations into making “counter-weights” to American power in favor of a “multipolar” world order — and French-led intellectual discourse has been AMAZINGLY successful at dumping the anger of the post-colonial world onto the United States, deflecting it from the largest colonial era powers (Western European) and this has done damage to the US today — it has made a more effective war on terrorism much harder or impossible — but compared to the Cold War threat, France’s anti-US discourse doesn’t bother me nearly as much.

And the nature of the threat or damage done to the US by using but abusing a relationship with it is what makes me fixate on South Korea’s anti-US culture. We have too much at stake with troops on the ground facing the terminally ill North Korean state to deal with the distortions that are the hallmark of real anti-Americanism while allowing the very same society to whore us out.

An Argentina or a Chile or a Gabon that likes to exaggerate the real ills of the US and American power or likes to downright lie about it doesn’t register much with me. It makes some difference, but it is minor compared to other places — places that want to enjoy an active mind-set of “bad America” while they enjoy the CURRENT benefits of a relationship with the very same bastard nation.

The level of whether something is criticism or anti-Americanism also depends, to me, on how much the person or group or society can back it up. How much is exaggeration? How much unreasonable? How much too unsuppported? How much of it can I effectively argue against?

And again, part of the thing at play here is how much the person or society likes to use the US. The more they enjoy the benefits but put forward weak arguments to justify a net negative attitude word the US as a nation, the more it bothers me.

And to close, another example. One of the more individual based anti-American thoughts you run across frequently in Korea but elsewhere as well is — how US cultural imperialism is destorying his or her society. How coke a cola and mcdonalds and blue jeans are such evil, usually when I’m talking to the person in the restaurant over a McNugget set and a coke after having just bought a new pair of ripped Guess jeans.

I can handle such arguments if the person is in hanbok and refuses to watch a Hollywood movie. But, when it comes from an individual who has or had as one of his or her biggest desires - to go to the US to study and who has no problem helping the degradation of his or her culture by buying American products (or imitatation American products), begin to feel the person has crossed the line from criticism to anti-Americanism.

I guess this is where it starts to become irrational.

You forget to take your meds again, Baduk?

This possibility boggles my mind. Who may attack Canada? Japan? Russia? China? England? Spain? Who? For what? The US?

Who knows, twenty years later the US and EU may lock horns over MiddleEastern oil and Canada may join on the side of EU. And, the US may have to seal the border and drop bombs on Toronto. Stranger things have happened before.

When you look at it closer the US has just been cleaning up messes Europeans created. Iraq was created by Europeans who drew bad borders. The Balkans we cleaned up another European mess. The Vietnam conflict was started by the French. You can go on to World War I & II for more examples of European failings.

Yet the US is the warmongers and the countries that created these messes are the peacekeepers.

There is no acceptable criticism. You’re either for us or against us.

Where is the line between acceptable criticism of the United States and slobbering anti-Americanism?

Or to put it another way:

As a non U.S. citizen, is being critical of the United States and being ungrateful for its good deeds in effect the same thing?

I would love to hear opinions.

As it is, whenever I point out to my leftist friends that their arguments are either touching on nutty, tin-hat conspiracy theory territory or are just basically an extreme exaggeration, I get expressions of consternation that I’ve become some kind of right wing fanatic, when I usually just point out what seems to me to be a middle ground between left and right.

Invading Iraq might have been a good thing, if only the US had waited a bit; the government could have found a reason based on facts to invade. The US was hasty.

On the other hand, the US was slow in WW1 and WW2. I think the article said the US entered WW1 in 1917. Europe and other supporters were there from 1914. For most of the world, WW2 started in 1939; for the US, 1941.

I guess the rest of the world needs to make up it’s mind when they want US intervention.