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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (119142)	11/11/2003 8:33:17 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>>To Hell With Sympathy - The goodwill America earned on 9/11 was illusory. Get over it By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER No one likes us. And the democrats know why: the world loved us just two years ago, and then this President, cowboy arrogant and rudely unilateral, blew it. "When America was savagely attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists on 9-11, virtually all the world was with us," writes Democratic elder statesman Theodore Sorensen. "But that moment of universal goodwill was squandered." He writes that in the current issue of The American Prospect, but he is speaking for just about every Democratic candidate, potentate, deep thinker and critic, and not a few foreign commentators as well. The formulation is near universal: "The president has somehow squandered the international outpouring of sympathy, goodwill and solidarity that followed the attacks of Sept. 11" (Al Gore). "He has squandered the goodwill of the world after Sept. 11" (John Kerry). The ur-text for this myth is the famous Le Monde editorial of Sept. 12, 2001, titled "We Are All Americans." But as Johns Hopkins professor Fouad Ajami points out, not only did that very editorial speak of America's paying for its cynicism, but also, within months, that same Le Monde publisher was back with a small book ("All Americans? The World After September 11, 2001"--note the question mark) filled with the usual belligerence toward and disapproval of America. What happened in those intervening few months? Is not the core Democratic complaint that it was overreaching in Iraq that caused the world to turn against us? And yet barely had we buried our 9/11 dead ? long before we entered Baghdad ? when the French, and the rest of the world, decided that they were not really Americans after all and were back to vilifying American arrogance, unilateralism, hegemony and so on. It is pure fiction that this pro-American sentiment was either squandered after Sept. 11 or lost under the Bush Administration. It never existed. Envy for America, resentment of our power, hatred of our success has been a staple for decades, but most particularly since victory in the cold war left us the only superpower. (Second half in next post)