The U.S. Image in the World

Re “Lost Love: Americophilia Fades Away,” Commentary, Oct. 25: Writer Ian Buruma is typically only looking at the situation of Americophilia from an Anglo/European point of view. Several months ago, I had the privilege of reciting, with more than 4,000 other immigrants, the Pledge of Allegiance at a naturalization ceremony in Los Angeles. Five thousand others were sworn in that morning.

Being Australian-born and of English/Irish heritage, the lack of other Caucasian faces in that huge crowd was apparent, so I wasn’t surprised when it was announced that the five largest groups being naturalized that day were Mexican, Filipino, Taiwanese, Korean and Iranian. Americophiles all!

Do these numbers reflect America as “an armed fortress, making it harder and harder for foreigners to enter the country”? Of course not. I doubt that any of them felt that their “hope of freedom, refuge from persecution and a second chance” were in jeopardy.

Although I didn’t come to the U.S. for those reasons, I was proud to be in their company that day and have no doubt that most will attain the American dream that the author feels can no longer be fulfilled. Americophilia may be fading away in the United Kingdom and Europe, but for countless people it is still alive and kicking.

Diana H. Spurlin

Venice

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Buruma details in roughly 40 column inches a part of what the foreign press tells us in one sentence -- that we have managed to change the admiration many other countries once felt for us into loathing and fear.

Hitlerism regenerated in another direction? We hope not. We ought to realize that being the most powerful nation on Earth does not mean we should be judged differently. Think back to when President Ronald Reagan sent a stealth mission to bomb and kill Libya’s Moammar Kadafi that instead killed about 70 others, including children. Much of the rest of the world saw that as an act of terrorism, which we use as the reason for killing tens of thousands in Iraq.

As it was in Vietnam, most of those killed in Iraq are civilians, usually referred to as “collateral damage.” For each individual hit, death or the agony of continuing to live is the same, whether it’s by an enemy’s dirty hands or our clean hands.

That may have been in old Sophocles’ mind when he wrote, “War never kills the evil, the good always.” In many centuries, it’s never been disproved.

Willard Hanzlik

Seal Beach