Washington Post editorial: “Mr. Martin becomes the second G-8 leader in four months to exit from office after discovering that anti-U.S. demagoguery is no longer enough to win an election. Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor, also tried to rescue his political career last fall by parading his differences with Mr. Bush; the result was the victory of Angela Merkel, who has moved swiftly to repair relations with Washington. Interestingly, both Mr. Schroeder and Mr. Martin won previous campaigns by playing anti-American cards, in 2002 and 2004 respectively. While it’s not clear that the level of ill feeling toward the United States or its president has changed much in Germany or Canada, it’s obviously not the foremost concern of voters fed up with domestic mismanagement — or, perhaps, political venality.”
Emphasis added; it is disingenuous to bill this trend as a defeat for anti-Americanism, as the italicized sentence concedes. Anti-Americanism is alive and well, in Canada, Germany and the rest of the world, with few exceptions. The proximal cause of contemporary anti-Americanism is the Bush regime, after the preceding decade of benevolence and goodwill the U.S. and the rest of the world enjoyed. The real defeat of anti-Americanism will be to turn the Republicans out of office in the U.S.
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