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**Unonounaple** · 02-05-2006, 08:43 AM

America was more respected around the world than at anytime under Bush

That's an awfully relative term there. Anti-Americanism has been ubiquitous in many parts of the world as long as I can remember. Always spiking when we are in confrontations with dictators(such as Iraq and Kosovo and before that, the Soviet Union). I remember right after the Kosovo War Clinton's appearance in Greece spawned riots.

I stopped caring what the world thought long before Bush came into office, because the world doesn't deal in good faith. International relations isn't about feel good ideals, it's about power, economics, and culture. If your interests align with other nations, they like you for as long as you are useful to them(and they useful to you). Once it is to a nation's advantage to demonize you, or us to demonize them, it's just done, regardless of what has been done for each other before. There are only three nations that I really care about, who we have a long, truly heartfelt relationship with: Britain, Canada, and Australia. Everyone else is only friends with us while it is useful to them, and I take their opinions as expressions of their narrow national interests, nothing more.

02-05-2006, 08:43 AM	#31
Unonounaple Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 533 Senior Member	America was more respected around the world than at anytime under Bush That's an awfully relative term there. Anti-Americanism has been ubiquitous in many parts of the world as long as I can remember. Always spiking when we are in confrontations with dictators(such as Iraq and Kosovo and before that, the Soviet Union). I remember right after the Kosovo War Clinton's appearance in Greece spawned riots. I stopped caring what the world thought long before Bush came into office, because the world doesn't deal in good faith. International relations isn't about feel good ideals, it's about power, economics, and culture. If your interests align with other nations, they like you for as long as you are useful to them(and they useful to you). Once it is to a nation's advantage to demonize you, or us to demonize them, it's just done, regardless of what has been done for each other before. There are only three nations that I really care about, who we have a long, truly heartfelt relationship with: Britain, Canada, and Australia. Everyone else is only friends with us while it is useful to them, and I take their opinions as expressions of their narrow national interests, nothing more.
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