Bush’s Legacy: Nobody Trusts US
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Foreign Policy, Polls, The World
The following represents one of the more damning polls I’ve seen about our administration’s lack of care for our global image. And image does matter, because when it tumbles in the global gutter our credibility as the beacon of freedom goes with it.
Yes, the global community is calling BS on the “you’re either with us or against us” foreign policy of this administration, and the numbers ain’t pretty.
April 19, 2007 – The results are now in. Whoever becomes president on Jan. 20, 2009, the next leader of the free world may face a task akin to taking over command of the Titanic. After the iceberg.That is the message behind a new multinational survey, released this week by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.org, which showed that nations around the world reject the idea that the United States should play the role of preeminent world leader. A majority of respondents polled in 15 countries, representing about 56 percent of the world’s population (the survey included China, India and Russia), also said the United States cannot be trusted any longer “to act responsibly in the world.” [...]
The current results contrast markedly with surveys taken at the end of the ’90s. Even as recently as 2002 (before the invasion of Iraq, in other words), a Pew survey found that despite criticisms of U.S. policy, a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, most people accepted a one-superpower world, if grudgingly. Even in countries that have since become virulently anti-American, like Jordan, Egypt and Russia, majorities back then concluded that “the world is safer with the United States as the lone superpower,â€Â? the survey noted. To compare 1999 State Department data with recent surveys by the Pew Trust, favorable views of the United States have dropped in Britain from 83 percent to 56 percent, in Germany from 78 percent to 37 percent, in Morocco from 77 percent to 49 percent, in Indonesia from 75 to 30 percent, in France from 62 to 39 percent, in Turkey from 62 to 12 percent and in Spain from 50 to 23 percent.
The question is simple, and I’d like for you to give your answer in the comments section: Why do we think we can transform the Middle East when we can’t even win over the hearts and minds of our allies?
Discuss.
This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2007 and is filed under Foreign Policy, Polls, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 20th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
The neocons had an agenda written up by Wolfowitz and Rummy in the Ford administration. Plan b. It was the basics of what became the PNAC policy. Only it dealt with the Soviet Union.
The whole thing has been in the works for 30 years. Until the stupid jerk in the White House got elected by the Supreme court, every president from Ford thru Clinton have given the neocons the boots and no thanks.
They are the ones that turned our policies, our reputation, our ideals into mush. They want permanent war in the middle east. after the fall of the Soviet Union, they identified the middle east as the ones to overtake. Make it a democracy so they are like Israel and will play nice.
This is what the neocons agenda is. To makeover the middle east so it’s friends with Israel. Cheney it is due to paranoia, meglomania, oil, and the imperial presidency. War is fast tracked. Rummy, it was his chance to remake his legacy of failure when sec of def. before. To make the military an elite, fast, ligthweight strike force thing.
For Bush, it makes for great photo ops. He can play dress up in Military stuff and strut around looking manly and have his picture taken.
A perfect storm of different agendas that came together as one under the bush Administration and taking down the middle east fit all their agendas.
There was no one reason. there were several by several parties. that is why no one can put their finger on the Why.
April 21st, 2007 at 9:54 am
It would also be interesting to see the results of polling on that question IN THE U.S. I’m betting that the fall, even from 2002 (i.e. after the Bush administration was in place but before Iraq) to today would be pretty large as well. This is one conservative, life-long Republican who has moved in that time from mildly dubious to totally unbelieving of anything that comes out of the administration. Which, unfortunately, has also spread in that time to parts of the federal government not usually considered political arms.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:50 pm
[...] Justin Gardner summarizes Bush’s legacy: nobody trusts the US anymore. Hilzoy refuses to call Maureen Dowd catty because doing so… would be an insult to cats. [...]
April 21st, 2007 at 1:01 pm
That is the message behind a new multinational survey, released this week by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.org, which showed that nations around the world reject the idea that the United States should play the role of preeminent world leader. A majority of respondents polled in 15 countries, representing about 56 percent of the world’s population (the survey included China, India and Russia), also said the United States cannot be trusted any longer “to act responsibly in the world.�
Given the Bush administration’s screwing of the pooch on many different matters (not just Iraq), I can hardly blame people of good will in other countries for this response. I wonder though, how many people (particularly in the countries I highlighted above) responded this way for reasons that have nothing to do with American bungling? As in, “the United States shouldn’t play the role of preeminent world leader… my country should”? (Or for that matter, “Islam should”?) And how many are simply wishing for a world without a superpower at all?
I also wonder how these responses will change once Bush is out of office. For those who just want some other country to have a turn at the top, or a world without a superpower, I doubt Bush’s departure (no matter who replaces him) would make much of a difference.
April 21st, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Sadly enough, I almost hope we have a Republican president next…because whoever it is will take over such a disaster in almost every arena that it will be almost impossible to recover, and will most likely get the boot in 2012. Of course if he/she’s a neocon they’d only make matters worse, but I think even the sheeple the republicans have duped into voting for them have realized the utter stupidity of the neocon philosophy.
April 21st, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Hey, did someone bother asking the Eastern Europeans? Or is this just yet again a grab of selective data to make a point?
April 21st, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Here is the actual survey
Read and enjoy…
April 22nd, 2007 at 2:44 pm
My own thought—and this is strictly based on anecdotal evidence from talking to friends and family in England and Europe—that it’s the Bush Administration they don’t trust. I think there is a certain attitude of “What’s WRONG with you people?” springing out of the fact that we elected him at all, but I think most of them are aware that Americans, even Republicans, are pretty disillusioned with this Administration.
They didn’t like Reagan or Bush Sr. either, I well remember. In general, they have seen Republicans since Ford as trigger-happy religious nutjobs who think God is telling them what to do next (I’m not agreeing with this, just saying what I’ve seen).