Back from an unofficial hiatus, I ran across an excellent article from The Economist ($) that goes into some detail on anti-Americanism:

So what explains France’s reputation for anti-Americanism? The main answer is that it is proclaimed bombastically by so many of those in France who strike political attitudes. They do this partly because of the rivalry between France and America, based on their remarkably similar self-images: the two countries both think they invented the rights of man, have a unique calling to spread liberty round the world and hold a variety of other attributes that make them utterly and admirably exceptional. Jealousy also plays a part. America is often better than France at activities that the French take great pride in, such as making movies or even cooking—at least if popular taste is the judge. And French politicians are not blind to the value of criticising someone else in order to divert attention from their own failures: French anti-Americanism tends to rise when France has just suffered a setback of some kind, whether defeat at the hands of the Germans, a drubbing in Algeria or the breakdown of the Fourth Republic.

Not many countries share all these characteristics, but several have some of them. Take Iran, where political diatribes, religious sermons, rent-a-mob demonstrations and heroic graffiti regularly denounce the Great Satan and all his doings. Anti-Americanism is central to the ideology of Iran’s ruling Shia clerics. Yet Iranians at large, like the French, are not noticeably hostile to America. The young in particular seem thoroughly pro-American, revelling in America’s popular culture, yearning for its sexual freedoms, some even hoping for an American deliverance from their oppression. Whether the affection runs deep is another matter: pro-Americanism among the young is a form of anti-regime defiance that might evaporate quickly if their country were attacked.

Yet why should the clerics bang on so relentlessly about the United States when the British were just as deeply involved in the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh’s regime in 1953, when Iraq under Saddam Hussein posed a much greater threat, and when, recently at least, America has shown itself ready to get rid of the Baathists next door and pave the way for a Shia-led government in Iraq? The main explanation, as in France, is rivalry. Iran’s theocratic regime has clear ambitions to be a leader not just of the Middle East but of the entire Muslim world. America, now avowedly bent on spreading democracy across the region, is in the way.

The points about Iran are well-taken. If we go after Iran, some day, it had better be articulated as something that’s in our self-interest, rather than flowery rhetoric about spreading democracy. I support the flowery rhetoric, but it’s not enough to sell an invasion on. We need to go in expecting that we will get little or no gratitude for liberating a people, and that we are likely to receive bile instead. The cause may be humiliation due to needing an outside power to free them, or it might be because Europe is allied against us again. Either way, I doubt gratitude will be forthcoming in the short term. A couple of decades, maybe.