Battleangel

“America Against the World” is a new massive study looking into “How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked.” Interestingly, the study tries to examine not only foreign policy but the way ordinary American behave, and possibly contribute, to their own negative image. The first and obvious conclusion is that people don’t generally like the U.S. But beyond that and without having read the report, it is difficult to say whether it constitutes a sincere attempt to examine America and Americans or if it just glosses over the problems in new imaginative ways.

Sploid “America the hated” - The world’s complicated love-hate relationship with the United States is now down to plain old hate — and regular Americans are as likely to be despised as the brutal U.S. government.

A new survey of some 91,000 people in 50 countries shows that whatever goodwill America had after 9/11 has completely evaporated.

“The precipitous rise in anti-Americanism is startling,” wrote the authors of the new Pew Global Attitudes study.

“America’s image is at a low ebb: Where once it was considered the champion of democracy, America is now seen as a self-absorbed, militant hyperpower.

“More than 70% of non-Americans say that the world would be improved if America faced a rival military power, and about half the citizens of Lebanon, Jordan, and Morocco think that suicide attacks on Americans in Iraq are justified.”

Irony alert: The study has a foreword by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who argues “that we cannot stop the spread of anti-Americanism without truly understanding who we are.” Right. Kind of makes you think the study is bogus without even reading it. Or perhaps that old bag of a war criminal and apologist for empire has come to new insights and a new understanding of human rights? Bloody unlikely. Though one has to admit she IS uniquely qualified to examine the topic of American hubris.

Madeleine Albright (NBC “Today” show, February 19, 1998)

If we have to use force, it is because we are America! We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall, and we see further into the future.