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The Roots of American Unpopularity

According to this year's Pew Global Attitudes Project, the percentage of people with a favorable opinion of the United States has fallen in all but a handful of countries over the last five years (the winner is Turkey, where only 3 percent of the population has confidence in the U.S.). The interesting part is that the roots of discontent appear to run a lot deeper than the war in Iraq or recent actions by the Bush administration.

After serving on a discussion panel in London that turned into an "extended round-robin denunciation of American foreign policy," Robert Kagan wrote in the Washington Post that there was almost no mention of Bush or the war in Iraq among critics of the United States. Instead, he writes, the criticism focused on "American policy during the Cold War for imposing evil regimes, causing poverty and suffering throughout the world, and blocking national liberation movements as a service to oil companies and multinational corporations."

Meanwhile, the International Herald Tribune found that the United States' handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict concerned people at least as much as the war in Iraq. Some interviewees in Muslim countries told the Tribune that the contrast between the "blind eye" that the US turns to Israeli strikes on Palestinians and its condemnations of Palestinians who launch their own attacks "shows that the West is biased in dealing with Muslims." That doesn't mean the Iraq war is insignificant in affecting opinions (indeed, it's one major reason for the United States' plummeting popularity), although in truth it probably doesn't matter—it's hardly the shot in the arm that America's image abroad clearly needs.

Posted by Paige Austin on 06/26/06 at 2:42 PM | E-mail | Print



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What the world needs to understand is that Beautiful America is just that: an Ugly Duckling that shall one day turn into the beautiful overseer of a much better world...
Don't you see, that's the thing here: Hitler too was a beautiful social scientest, only the "niggers" somehow won...
Oh wow, too bad..., people need to understand that imposing evil regimes, causing poverty and suffering, and blocking national liberation movements as a service to oil companies and multinational corps. is GOOD!!!
If only all the stupid people could understand the fact that we have to be the biggest, nastiest sons-of-bitches--in order to begin the new age of freedom!!!
Hah hah..., isn't this the "modern" thinking of so many "deep thinkers" today--who understand that it's not the Gov.'s fault that it must do what must be done (for the good of all), in order to counter the lower-classes, who are a major pain in the ass!!!
Think about what former FBI chief William Sullivan said of the Cold War: "This is a rough, tough, dirty business, and dangerous... No holds were barred."
Then consider how Nelson Rockefeller, at age 32, was given the responsibility (by Roosevelt) of running a $150 million propaganda campaign in Latin America. After "engineering" a ruling which exempted from taxation the cost of advertisements palced by American corps (this came to equate to 40% of all radio and television revenues) he was able to control the image projected about Ammerica... Thus Nelson came to understand that as long as Latin Americans were spoonfed manufactured anecdotes and dramatic happenings that fell within the generally accepted definition of "news," they would not question the interest or politics that lay behind the disclosure of information to them...
After his 1964 defeat at the Republican convention, Rockefeller developed an issue which appealed to both conservatives and liberals alike: he worked to establish in the popular imagination a connection between violent crimes and illicit drug usage.
Demanding an all out war on drugs, he managed to rush laws through the N.Y. legislature which made it mandatory that anyone convicted of possessing more than a fraction of an ounce of amphetamines,LSD, ect, would be imprisoned for life.
In fact, Nelson's numbers were way off, and only 1/445th the number of crimes that he claimed were committed by addicts actually were. According to the NYPD, "Both the volume and the seriousness of addict crime are exaggerated."
Of course, the silver lining here is that, actually, that's the big idea, piss off the entire world to drive up the price of oil!
And it's working like a charm!!!

Posted by: Michael L. Wagner on 06/26/06 at 5:11 PM

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