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| Understanding Anti-Americanism: Why does the World dislike America? Published on the Aggressive-Voice.com on 7/6/2002 By Tony McWilliams On this July 4th weekend, columnist after columnist will focus on many of the reasons to love America, and with good reason. Arguably America is the most free and successful country on the planet and maybe in the history of the world. However, it does Americans little good to simply pat themselves on the back for their greatness. The Fourth of July is a time for looking back and celebrating what we have, but it should also be a time for understanding the lessons of time to improve on the country we have. If Americans should have learned anything in the last year, it would be to understand our role in the world and how we impact the world around us. Whereas, a decade a go, the idea of a global community may have been spoken, and Americans have been able to travel and communicate with the rest of the world like no other time in history; it seems that we have always seen ourselves as the center of the world and not utilized our technology to better understand the world around us. Election 2000 proved the point for us. Almost no one even flinched, as President Bush couldn�t name the leaders of countries largely because they couldn�t either. It showed a naivety on the part of Americans about the importance of the rest of the world. It sent a message to the world that they weren�t significant in our minds. One does not have to go into a detailed, in depth foreign policy discussion in order to understand why the world continues to develop anti-Americanism. Recent events clearly illustrate why the world strongly dislikes the way America conducts its foreign policy. If one only considers the year 2002, or half a year, the events of the Bush Administration have sent a message to the world: America rules the world and the world cannot judge America. The Bush Administration has decided that the leadership in Iraq must be changed. It is not based on the decision of the Iraqi people, but rather the political decision of President Bush. The Bush Administration has decided to fund rebel groups, potentially use Special Forces and even an all out invasion. The support has been less than stellar in the international community for such an action with even Secretary of State Colin Powell telling Congress on Feb. 6th that the �United States might have to do (it) alone.� No one will say that Saddam is the ideal leader by any means, but it does begin the illustration of a disturbing trend. In April, elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a leftist leader, was overthrown for a day. While the CIA and American Intelligence sources deny any involvement in the coup attempt, Wayne Madsen, former National Security Agency officer under President Reagan is one of many intelligence analysts who claim the CIA and American Naval ships were involved in the coup. Immediately following the coup attempt, the United States not only did not condemn the military overthrow of a democratically elected leader, but Steve Lucas, US Southern Command spokesman called it �in accordance with the country�s laws and constitution,� after the coup attempted to disband the elected Congress, the Supreme Court, and abolish the Constitution. It took the Bush Administration a day to decide to condemn the coup attempt after other Organization of American States countries did so. Chavez was not popular in the United States for his work to revitalize OPEC and raise oil prices. In late June, President Bush announced that the Palestinian leadership must go. While he did not directly point the finger at Yasser Arafat by name, he did call for the �Palestinian people to elect new leaders,� and Arafat is the big leader up for election. It was an obvious attempt to influence the Palestinian elections and get Arafat out of power to be replaced with someone else. In each case, there is a backlash or separation from the American position. Powell indicates it in his comments to Congress that America may have to remove Saddam without any international help in a fight that just a decade ago had the world almost unified against Saddam. OAS sources say that it may have to do some work to heal the distrust between Washington and Venezuela and its neighbors for fear of returning to the �banana republic� days of Washington overthrows of Latin American governments at will for going too far left in elected officials. And even British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has marched in step with Bush since 9/11 has backed away from Bush on the removal of Arafat. And opposition leaders to Arafat in Palestine have started to back Arafat out of fear of being labeled as an �American stooge.� Continued |
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