John Burns, the distinguished New York Times foreign correspondent who just recently left his posting in Baghdad (where he had been stationed since before the Iraq war), granted an interview with the British Independent last week. Burns is an honest reporter who never lets ideology get in the way of his work, and his Iraq coverage is widely admired by both those who oppose and support the war.

A man perhaps more well-traveled than anyone, a member of “a new tribe that lives on 747’s,” Burns, who is British, offers his views of the United States:

He is a “tremendous admirer” of the U.S. and thinks anti-Americanism is fool-headed. “People need to make a clear distinction in their mind between a war at present that they judge ill and a country that is a very great nation of which we are all—not just we Brits but all of us everywhere—beneficiaries. What kind of world would this be without America, its power, its culture, its generosity, its enterprise, its invention, and what it has taught us all about liberty? I’m sorry if that sounds jingoistic—I believe it.”

Perhaps Naomi Klein’s husband, Canadian television host Avi Lewis, will invite Burns onto his talk show. As Lewis did with previous guest Ayaan Hirsi Ali, he can inform Burns that his “faith in American democracy is just delightful,” and ask the distinguished Englishman, “Is there a school where they teach you these American clichés?” No doubt Burns’s credibility would underscore the foolishness of Lewis’s ruminations.