I don't know. The Americanity of some of the themes, or a certain Americanity anyway, isn't something I've discussed much, in part because except for the fact I was a fairly politicized teenager in the 80s and so very conscious of the last stretches and end of the cold war, it's motifs or inspiration that don't touch me that much (for some of them I simply disagree with his perspective or values), in part because while I respect Jordan's personal experiences and his desire to express them in a way cathartic or meaningful to him via Fantasy, WOT never striked me as a transcendant work from a veteran (no more than Tolkien's was, to be perfectly honest). There's so many works from American men and women from those generations that approach masterpiece status that WOT didn't contribute much of anything new or very special on that front (the known massive popularity of the series with American soldiers - we haven't seen them much on forums, but the few we saw often testified to WOT paperbacks being near ubiquitous on the front during the two Iraq conflicts and the one in Afghanistan, might give the lie to that however, or simply reveal my different sensibilities).

I like the diversity of mythologic/folklore sources used by RJ - though since WOT began other writers like Erikson have jumped on that bandwagon and done it better, but I also always found most of his referencing superficial, in a large part because his concept brought him to turn everything upside down, which in turn deprived them of their deeper meaning for the most part. His use of Arthuriana in particular has pretty much left me cold from start to finish, as there's something almost Disney-esque about it all (not a big fan of the English Arthurian tradition, to begin with. I always much preferred the Templar/Cathar-influenced French tradition of de Troyes).

Thematically speaking, it's the themes surrounding knowledge/information (and madness) that I found the most interesting, but as Fionwe pointed out, it's probably the one theme for which Brandon dropped the ball, unable that he was to render the various changes of perspectives and play with the POVs the way Jordan did... A testimony to the level of intricacy Jordan pushed this is that Brandon and "Team Jordan" were simply unable to keep up with something as basic as what each character knew and didn't know. Heck, for example Brandon resolved an issue for Nynaeve as central to her character (it followed her since book 1) as coming to term with Moraine's actions by having Nyaneve reflect on detailed behaviour/actions by Moiraine in books 4-5, and Rand's reactions to those actions that Nynaeve has never witnessed as she was on the other side of the world hunting the BA when it all happened, and Jordan being Jordan, we know Egwene, who was meeting Nynaeve strictly with WO at the time and most of those meetings were shown onscreen, never shared with her (nor truly ever understood, so she could never tell Nyaneve about this from a neutral perspective). With blunders of that scope, as well say this theme is gone and we'll never know where Jordan really intended to go with it for the resolution.

The other aspects of the series which impress me more aren't thematic or so little, it's rather the great complexity of layers of patterns found through the series. It's all extremely cerebral and calculated. It's not terribly meaningful, Jordan was not intellectual, but it's very elaborate, very consistent through the whole series, and it's little short of maniacal in scope and detail (not unlike Erikson, if more "simple" It's present at every level, macro and micro... patterns in body language, in the use of colors, or shapes and objects, repeating scenes and situations at the plot level, mirrored cultural elements, mirrored motifs, patterns in storylines, in book structuring, patterns in how Jordan developped each locations etc. It's literally everywhere... and literary speaking it's more maniacal than succesful, as for most readers awareness of some of this stopped at annoyance: "jeez, Jordan is so repetitive... must he have all women do this or that gesture, must he mention the color of dresses every time, how many times does he intend to get Elayne kidnapped? Few people noticed he did that with maniacal purpose, to create very small patterns within slightly larger patterns with larger ones within macro ones, crafting this way a world and story respecting the concept of The Pattern in every respect. Thankfully, this is one of the things Brandon noticed (or found notes about) and worked to keep in.

Other than that, or primarily in fact, it's mostly the entertaining nature of the series I found appealing, that and the sheer amount of plot and worldbuilding details that I know annoyed a lot of readers but that appealed to a maniacal side of me, I guess, and it's a series that was always fun to discuss, because it offered a lot of world building/plot elements to favorize that, doubled with Jordan's use of character perspectives that explain a lot why WOT fans didn't simply have favourites, but got invested so much on all forums in defending/attacking characters.

I short, I don't have that high an opinion of the thematic or literary value of the series (though I maintain my opinion that as popular literature it's very honest and quite comparable to the likes of Dumas and co, and a far cry from the really trashy stuff). Thematically it's handled ok for the most part, but it's all pretty much the expected (in French I would use "convenu", that would be closer to what I mean than "expected". Jordan had the eye of an Irish folk storyteller. He had the same genius for reducing characters to a few traits he exagerrated to a certain comical effect (cartoon or comic book-ish, some say, but it's really more folklore-like). I always found that amusing, personally, but WOT is hardly a work you come out of with any deeper understanding or even any questionning of human nature. It's somewhat more interesting for what it reveals of Jordan himself. A bit like LOTR and Tolkien, in the end.