Hi Ken,
"how the world views America" is central and is just fine with me but let's try to emphasize 'world'.
The proof is in the pudding. Here is the Pew Research Center's poll:
What the World Thinks in 2002
How Global Publics View: Their Lives, Their Countries, The World, America
people-press.org
I think paul, JohnM, and you make some excellent points on this topic. On the one hand, simply bringing up this topic to bash the Left as anti-American is just plain silly. On the other hand, there is a genuine concern of growing anti-American sentiment growing around the world and how that may affect our future foreign policy tool box.
What I find most disturbing about the results of the Pew's poll is not the hostility among Arab and Muslim nations, but the growing divergence between citizens of countries who have always been traditionally sympathetic to our cause: Britain, Canada, South Korea, etc., and I ignore the French.
Another interesting take on the Pew's poll is the question of whether the democratization of Arab/Muslim nations is in the best interest of the United States (ignoring the basic question of whether it is even realistically possible to project democracy in the Mideast). For example, the governments of Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan have been relatively friendly and cooperative with our war against terror but a great majority of people in these countries dislike our "culture." How would free elections in these countries translate into governance and representation of their constituents' desire? Are Americans able to accept the realization that even if democracy can be enabled in the Mideast, there is a distinct possibility that we may find ourselves dealing with a nation of people that don't really like us, don't really want our influence, and don't really want our presence in their part of the world? |
