I honestly don't know what drives European resentment of America. Seems to me we've spent a lot of time, money, and lives revitalizing Europe over the past 100 years.

Perhaps the thinking behind the second sentence is part of the explanation for the first. ;-)

Yeah I know that those euro-brats can only espouse freedom and the rest of it because US troops defended their borders during the cold war ;-) but in 2008 I'm afraid that people aren't focused on that. They're focused on a united Greater European Reich which seems far more acceptable to this generation. My kids have walked across an unmonitored footbridge between Germany and France where there was once a Maginot line, part of which is still there fwiw. That's what people look at and if they hear about being saved by the US etc etc, perhaps they consider that the US has benefited more than enough in the after-war period and now it is time to focus on Europe's future as a free and prosperous continent rather than as the source of silly Pyrrhic wars.