Anne Applebaum is mostly right about the current low opinion of US competence, however, I think that she has missed the elephant in the room. It was said long ago that the US military was an organisation designed by geniuses to be run by idiots, and this is even more true of our government itself. As an American resident in the UK, most of the criticism I have seen has been directed at the US government (the British are almost proud of there long record of military incompetence, from losing the 13 colonies, through the Charge of the Light Brigade, the disaster at Isandelwaneh, the loss of an entire army at Kut al-Amara in Iraq, the sending of the battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse against the Japanese fleet without escort of air cover of any kind, and the great Fortress of Singapore, which had no landward defenses).

What has really damaged the US reputation for competence is Katrina. The failure to put the National Guard on standby as the hurricane approached, the failure even to attempt to organize and evacuation, the failure to call, before it hit or for some time afterwards, for federal emergency assistance, and the failure to manage the recovery effort afterwards, not to mention the failure of successive state and federal administrations to adequately maintain the flood defenses of New Orleans are a record of local, state, and national incompetence second to none.

There is no more truly American slogan than 'the difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer'. It is the recognition that not only is this attitude characteristic of the US in general, but that we deliver on the attitude, much more than our sheer size and weight as a nation, which has, in the past, caused people around the world to look to us for leadership in all walks of life. While our reputation for competence has been severely damaged by a series of bungled situations in recent years, most comment I have seen in Britain is more nuanced than to think the US in general is now hopelessly incompetent, or even that most US citizens are so. What would do most to restore the reputation of the United States in the world would be a change of leadership, as it is clearly seen that it is the leadership, not the troops, who have failed.