In the London Telegraph, Anne Applebaum looks at Europe’s perception of the United States, and how it has changed—and stayed the same—since the days after the September 11th attacks:

Within a couple of days [after the attacks,] a Guardian columnist wrote of the “unabashed national egotism and arrogance that drives anti-Americanism among swaths of the world’s population”. A Daily Mail columnist denounced the “self-sought imperial role” of the United States, which he said had “made it enemies of every sort across the globe”.

That week’s edition of Question Time featured a sustained attack on Phil Lader, the former US ambassador to Britain - and a man who had lost colleagues in the World Trade Centre - who seemed near to tears as he was asked questions about the “millions and millions of people around the world despising the American nation”. At least some Britons, like many other Europeans, were already secretly or openly pleased by the 9/11 attacks.

And all of this was before Afghanistan, before Tony Blair was tainted by his friendship with George Bush, and before anyone knew the word “neo-con”, let alone felt the need to claim not to be one.

The dislike of America, the hatred for what it was believed to stand for - capitalism, globalisation, militarism, Zionism, Hollywood or McDonald’s, depending on your point of view - was well entrenched. To put it differently, the scorn now widely felt in Britain and across Europe for America’s “war on terrorism” actually preceded the “war on terrorism” itself. It was already there on September 12 and 13, right out in the open for everyone to see.

After some future terrorist attack, we’ll hear lots of hand-wringing from people who say that our aggressive foreign policy invited the attack—in effect, we deserved it. But just as Europe’s disdain for America predates our response to 9/11, the hatred of the Jihadis was forged long before we invaded Afghanistan or Iraq.

During the quarter century that preceded the September 11th attacks, U.S. foreign policy towards the Jihadists was quite passive. From President Carter’s helplessness as dozens of Americans were held hostage for 444 days by Islamic revolutionaries in Iran, through the tail-between-the-legs pullouts in Beirut (President Reagan) and Somalia (President Clinton), the default bi-partisan American response to Jihadist provocation was to ignore it or to turn and run. And on the rare occasion that we strayed from that norm, whatever military response we did launch tended to be quite feeble. During this time, Jihadist attacks only grow more frequent and more deadly. Our passivity invited more attacks from people who were trying to get our attention.

And now that the Jihadists got our attention, many in Europe seem to wish they hadn’t. (Or, more accurately, that we’d continue to ignore them.)

I’m afraid that Europe will discover in the coming years that this is not an option. Since 9/11, the American homeland has remained free from attack, but there have been bombs in London and Madrid, riots all over France, a murder over a documentary film, and mass violence over cartoons. These events all have one thing in common, but Europe refuses to see it.

If we do suffer another attack on American soil, it will not be because our foreign policy invited it, but because our military campaign has not yet defeated the enemy. But if Europe is attacked again, it will likely be because they have not yet learned the lesson that we did five years ago.

I think Europe will come closer to America’s point of view...eventually. But unfortunately, it probably won’t be until after the Jihadists get the attention of Europe the way they got ours.