result #112585 - "HATRED OF AMERICA UNITES THE WORLD" ?

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result #112585 - "HATRED OF AMERICA UNITES THE WORLD" ?

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"HATRED OF AMERICA UNITES THE WORLD" ?

[+] ballot by Doctordraw
created Tue Feb 27, 07

Please excuse the length of the article, but its interesting stuff.

"Being hated is no fun. Few of us are like those pantomime villains who glory in the hisses and boos of an audience. And few people hate being hated more than Americans. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've been asked the plaintive question: "Why do they hate us?" and another for each of the different answers I've heard. It's because of our foreign policy. It's because of their extremism. It's because of our arrogance. It's because of their inferiority complex. Americans really hate not knowing why they're hated.

The best explanation is in fact the simplest. Being hated is what happens to dominant empires. It comes - sometimes literally - with the territory. George Orwell knew the feeling. As a young man he served as an assistant police superintendent in British-run Burma, an experience he memorably described in his essay "Shooting an Elephant". Called upon to kill a rogue pachyderm that had run amok, Orwell was suddenly aware "of the watchful yellow faces behind" him:

"The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh."

Eric Blair, as Orwell was known then, could scarcely have been better prepared for his role as a colonial official. Born in Bengal, the son of a colonial civil servant, he had been educated at Eton, where boys learn not to worry much about being hated. Yet even he found the resentment of the natives hard to bear: "In the end the sneering... faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves ... was perplexing and upsetting."

That's a feeling American soldiers in Baghdad must know pretty well. How does that old Randy Newman song go? "No one likes us - I don't know why. / We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try."

But who hates Americans the most? You might assume that it's people in countries that the United States has recently attacked or threatened to attack. Americans themselves are clear about who their principal enemies are. Asked by Gallup to name the "greatest enemy" of the United States today, 26 per cent of those polled named Iran, 21 per cent named Iraq and 18 per cent named North Korea. Incidentally, that represents quite a success for George W. Bush's concept of the "Axis of Evil". Six years ago, only 8 per cent named Iran and only 2 per cent North Korea.

Are those feelings of antagonism reciprocated? Up to a point. According to a poll by Gallup's Centre for Muslim Studies, 52 per cent of Iranians have an unfavourable view of the United States. But that figure is down from 63 per cent in 2001. And it's significantly lower than the degree of antipathy towards the United States felt in Jordan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Two thirds of Jordanians and Pakistanis have a negative view of the United States and a staggering 79 per cent of Saudis. Sentiment has also turned hostile in Lebanon, where 59 per cent of people now have an unfavourable opinion of the United States, compared with just 41 per cent a year ago. No fewer than 84 per cent of Lebanese Shiites say they have a very unfavourable view of Uncle Sam.

These figures suggest a paradox in the Muslim world. It's not America's enemies who hate the United States most, it's people in countries that are supposed to be America's friends, if not allies.

The paradox doesn't end there. The Gallup poll (which surveyed 10,000 Muslims in 10 different countries) also revealed that the wealthier and better-educated Muslims are, the more likely they are to be politically radical. So if you ever believed that anti-Western sentiment was an expression of poverty and deprivation, think again. Even more perplexingly, Islamists are more supportive of democracy than Muslim moderates. Those who imagined that the Middle East could be stabilised with a mixture of economic and political reform could not have been more wrong. The richer these people get, the more they favour radical Islamism. And they see democracy as a way of putting the radicals into power.

The paradox of unfriendly allies is not confined to the Middle East. Last week was not a good week for Americanophiles in Europe. Tony Blair announced British troop withdrawals from southern Iraq, an unfortunate signal on the eve of the American "surge". Meanwhile, in Rome, his counterpart Romano Prodi had to resign because his coalition partners would not agree either to keep Italian troops in Afghanistan or to enlarge a US military base at Vicenza. Anti-Americanism is nothing new in European politics, to be sure, particularly on the Left. But there is something novel going on here, which extends to traditionally pro-American constituencies.

Back in 1999, 83 per cent of British people surveyed by the State Department Office of Research said that they had a favourable opinion of the United States. But by 2006, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, that proportion had fallen to 56 per cent. British respondents to the Pew surveys now give higher favourability ratings to Germany (75 per cent) and Japan (69 per cent) than to the United States - a remarkable transformation in attitudes, given the notorious British tendency to look back both nostalgically and unforgivingly to the Second World War. It's also very striking that Britons recently polled by Pew regard the US presence in Iraq as a bigger threat to world peace than Iran or North Korea (a view which is shared by respondents in France, Spain, Russia, India, China and throughout the Middle East).

Nor is Britain the only disillusioned ally. Perhaps not surprisingly, two thirds of Americans believe that their country's foreign policy considers the interests of others. But this view is shared by only 38 per cent of Germans and 19 per cent of Canadians. More than two thirds of Germans surveyed in 2004 believed that American leaders wilfully lied about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction prior to the previous year's invasion, while a remarkable 60 per cent expressed the view that America's true motive was "to control Middle Eastern oil". Nearly half (47 per cent) said it was "to dominate the world".

The truly poignant fact is that when Americans themselves are asked to rate foreign countries, they express the most favourable views of none other than Britain, Germany and Canada.

Back in the 1990s, Madeleine Albright pompously called the United States "the indispensable nation". Today it seems to have become the indefensible nation, even in the eyes of its supposed friends.

There are, admittedly, a few scraps of good news in the international polls. Very few Europeans, for example, would welcome China's becoming a serious military rival to the United States. There is overwhelming European opposition to Iran's acquiring nuclear weapons. And there is a surprising amount of hostility towards the Palestinian radicals of Hamas in both France and Germany. But look again at some of America's supposed allies. One in four Indians, two out of five Egyptians and one out of every two Pakistanis favour a nuclear-armed Iran. A third of Britons, half of all Indians and three quarters of Egyptians welcomed the success of Hamas in last year's Palestinian elections.

Orwell would have understood. Just as it was the educated beneficiaries of British rule in Asia who were the most strident anti-imperialists in Orwell's day, so the British Empire's most natural allies - France and the United States - were anything but Anglophile. For it turns out that power not only corrupts, as Lord Acton famously observed, it also tends to isolate.

It's not for nothing that they say it's lonely at the top."

By Niall Ferguson, Sunday Telegraph

Do you agree with the premis eof this article, namely that the worlds top economy at any point will always be resented? Or is this merely a comforting self delusion on the part of some Americans?

American " arrogance and ignorance" are the real reasons	75%
Top economy will always be resented	14%
American foreign policy is the real reason	8%
other (comment or leave choice)	1%

Ballot #112585: has 165 total votes.
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COMMENTS:
Two things to note here;

1) The image wasnt meant to offend, it just seemed appropriate for such a volatile subject.

2) "The Gallup poll (which surveyed 10,000 Muslims in 10 different countries) also revealed that the wealthier and better-educated Muslims are, the more likely they are to be politically radical. So if you ever believed that anti-Western sentiment was an expression of poverty and deprivation, think again"

Does this mean that American foreign policy in these areas is ultimately futile? This could also have been the main question of this ballot, the implications are astounding.

by Doctordraw on Tue Feb 27, 07 10:39am [+]

Voted : American foreign policy is the real reason
being hated is what happens to the failing empires.

There was a time when United States of America was a respected nation, a paradise, a land of the FREE and the greatest country on earth that everybody in the world aspired to visit or immigrate to - and it's wasn't that long ago.

by LCD on Tue Feb 27, 07 10:42am [+]

Voted : American foreign policy is the real reason
interesting ballot. i think it's probably a combination of all the factors listed as choices. i also think much of it is due to misconceptions to a degree -- people have the wrong idea about americans as a "people" and much of that is due to hollywood spreading that false image.

seriously -- if you ask many americans about being an "empire" or being a "super power," a vast majority would reply "huh?" most americans don't think of ourselves that way. to us we're pretty much just "us."

but i think much of it is also due to misguided foreign policy. look at the numbers in the poll up until bush took office. fact is, he's done us much harm. if you look at the british empire at it's height, it was hated as much. difference is, people didn't connect that hate because there wasn't mass and instant communication like there is now.

half the stuff i read on the net about the usa is just rubbish.

that being said, we need to get our act together and stop being so damned obnoxious with our foreign policy.

by Kev24 on Tue Feb 27, 07 11:12am [+]

Voted : other (comment or leave choice)
Good ballot. I will be completely honest, I know more people who think ill of America than people who like America. Whether this is because of America being the lone superpower, I do not know. I think foreign policy comes into account, and also America's arrogance and ignorance; at least by its politicians. Now I am British, and I thought it was completely wrong the way Condoleezza Rice came out and said she believed France should be punished for criticizing America's foreign policy. I find it laughable to be told that all Frenchmen are cowards for not supporting a war. I live next to an American family from San Diego, and they are exactly the same as my family, except their accents aren’t as good. ; ) The vast majority of Americans are good, honest people, and are let down by the poor image they have abroad.

by winston on Tue Feb 27, 07 11:16am [+]

Voted : Top economy will always be resented
But fine structure of that resentment is determined by recent events.

by thc2883 on Tue Feb 27, 07 2:09pm [+]

Voted : American foreign policy is the real reason
Foreigners don't know the real America. All they get to see is what Mister Bush and His Posse provide in the way of image. Thank you again, Mister Bush...

Great ballot, Doctor!

by Truthseeker013 on Tue Feb 27, 07 2:16pm [+]

Voted : Top economy will always be resented
The super-power or colonial conquering country will always be hated the most.

by FiddleFaddleOnLSD on Tue Feb 27, 07 6:17pm [+]

If we keep helping the poor of the world (if we have any money left after our wars I mean) and helping stabilize the environment then we'll be appreciated instead of hated :D

by Jyl on Tue Feb 27, 07 7:12pm [+]

Voted : Top economy will always be resented
It's nice that Iran hates us less than some of our friends.

by skylab on Tue Feb 27, 07 10:06pm [+]

I'm Canadian!

by Robo_Christ on Fri Apr 06, 07 7:42am [+]

I wish that the US would become isolationists to a certain degree. I think we should let other countries sink or swim on their own. I hope I'm still alive to see that day come.

by mindy on Wed Jun 27, 07 7:23am [+]

Probably mostly Americans voted in this poll, so the results will reflect what they'd *like* to be the reason for their deep unpopularity.

Sigh...

by ramaDUNG on Thu Aug 02, 07 5:39pm [+]

Mindy yeah i see your point. The UK wouldnt struggle without the US as we've battled through far worse and have always come through it..were just one tough little island, and Winston Chruchill Put it best when he said "We shall never Surrender". So true..so true. But yeah alot of countries may fail without the US but then that said..would they really??? Theres always hope and there is always a way..with or without the US...Britains great great empire..one of the biggest the world has ever known, handled itself ok when it was all handed back...so you get my point.

by Brit_Airborne on Thu Nov 22, 07 11:35am [+]

I wasn't implying that without US help that other countries were automatically doomed to failure. I"m tired of my government feeling that the US is somehow obligated to run around the world getting involved in everything.

by mindy on Sun Nov 25, 07 10:14am [+]

Voted : Top economy will always be resented
But I personally love the USA.

by EUROTOPIA on Sat Dec 01, 07 9:09pm [+]

Fuck off & live there, then.

by ramaDUNG on Thu Dec 20, 07 9:49am [+]

"There was a time when United States of America was a respected nation, a paradise, a land of the FREE and the greatest country on earth that everybody in the world aspired to visit or immigrate to - and it's wasn't that long ago."

Do you *really* think so? Or might it peerhaps just be rose-tinted patriotic hyperbole?

As a non-American, I can state with absolute conviction that the USA has certainly been none of those things in my lifetime.

In fact, the readiness of its citizens to boast about how wonderful their homeland is has always been one of America's LEAST endearing qualities.

by DingleDUNG on Tue Feb 26, 08 9:17am [+]

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