Why Does the World Hate the US?

[Blue Rectangle]

After the terrorist attacks, the world had a lot of sympathy for the U.S.  But the President squandered that good will by bombing the wrong country.  He then went even further, declaring a war against a country that posed zero threat to the U.S., without UN approval-greatly angering not only permanent members of the Security Council, but even our closest allies in NATO.

Now, before you think I’ve gone completely nuts, let me explain.  The terrorist attacks that generated sympathy for us were the embassy bombings in 1998.  The bombing of the wrong country was Clinton’s cruise missile attack on an aspirin factory in Sudan a few years after bin Ladin had left the country.  The war against a country that posed zero threat to us was the war in Kosovo, which greatly angered both the Russians and the Chinese (of course, the Chinese didn’t get really upset until we dropped a bomb on their embassy).  Greece was bitterly opposed to the war; several other NATO nations were moderately opposed to the war and refused to assist.

I saw the anger and mistrust of the U.S. first-hand in 1999 while I was working in Trieste, Dresden, and Berlin.  Anyone who thinks this began with Bush is completely ignorant of U.S./European relations or is trying to base an attack on Bush upon fiction.