Why do countries we saved treat us so shabbily?

Why is it that countries we saved (either from their own madness run amok and/or external threats) seem to hold us in such disdain?

France...1917-1918, while Americans can certainly not claim they saved France, their contribution was significant. American forces did serve with distinction, effectiveness, and many made the ultimate sacrifice.
France...1944-1945, America and Britain (with an assist from other allied powers and the French underdround/French in exile) did save France.

Germany, 1941-1945, America helped defeat the most barbaric, tyrannical regime ever to blight the earth....AND (this is important) rebuilt their nation....AND....prevented West Germany (and Western Europe for that matter) from falling to the Soviet Menace for 46 years!

Japan, 1941-45, wrested the country from a destructive, Militaristic, recklessly expansionist cult mentality...rebuilt their nation...and helped turn them into one of the most productive, technological advanced, affluent societies on earth. Granted, Japan hasn't been treating us with the diplomatic disdain of the above two, but many examples (unfair trade practices, feelings of cultural superiority) do exist.

Isn't it interesting that emerging from WWII as a victorious superpower (and the only one wielding the atomic hammer at the time) that rather than enslaving nations (as did the USSR) we rebuilt their infrastructure and returned their control to an indigenous democracy?

*** Why can't they be grateful and more the agreeable lapdogs that Thatcher and Blair have been? ***
(That was a joke.)

Because in the meantime there happened to be more recent things that were not so clever? People's memory is quite short, the WWI generation is gone, and the WWII nearly too. So better build up some credit again

I *really* hope SH doesn't do silly things, or your country will be doomed for years. Even if it will be SH who pulls the trigger to use bio-chem weapons, perhaps killing thousands of his own population in a "grand finale", I fear the US will take the blame for it in the public opinion and in the Arabic nations.

Hi James,

I think it is more subtle than this. Nobody in the EU wants to give up their language, so everything gets translated in all languages (imagine!). Not only the French speak no English. Ever heard a Spanish or Italian speak English? As rare as a French speaking English.

The problem is the French parties are under enormous pressure from the extreme nationalist Front Nationale from Jean-Marie Le Penn. They are rather popular in recent years and all democratic parties had to join together to get Chirac elected, or the president would have been an extreme right-winged nationalist. It is logical and understandable (but not necessarily good) that the other parties do a step towards some more nationalism to counter the extreme right.

D.

"The French seem to crave some kind of leading role in the EU and to this day refuse to adopt English as the universal language, and most of their diplomats and ambassadors do not even speak English. It supposedly kind of pisses off the EU, since everything has to be translated into French, just for the French."

Even the Olympic games have everything repeated in French. Why????

Maurice