Ok, I have an honest question here. Why is it that the general consensus abroad is an extreme hate for America? The guy who wrote this piece obviously hates the country, and says things like

"First, let's drop all the pretense about the "world." What these authors really mean is a large part of the US and British political establishment, with occasional additions from other Western countries. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but you ain't no "world."
If we aren't the world, then why so much interest in us? He obviously knows enough about the Katrina incident to call it a huge blunder. He knows enough about our involvment with Iraq to say that we're losing. If we aren't the world, and we are a bunch of fat idiots, then why do you care?

Maybe it's because we're in some way trying to shove our democratic principles down your throat? Is that the reason? Yeah, maybe we do stand on a soapbox sometimes and say that our way is the best, because it seems to work for us. No offense, but the Russian political system has collapsed twice in the last 100 years. You never hear any nation referred to as a "Former state of America". Yet we're the imperialists, and we're trying to take over the world.

It just seems that the hipocracy here is obscene. In Russia (and other countries, I gather) there is this fervent hate for America. It doesn't matter that, perhaps in other countries' pasts there have been tremendous acts of genocide, mass murder, etc... But as soon as America gets entangled abroad in a war which we all would agree is a mistake, everybody craps their pants and starts screaming that we're about to take over the world or something.

The truth of the matter is that most american's don't care about other countries. They don't hate them and they don't love them. They probably couldn't even point to Russia on a map, and probably think that Siberia is another country. They get scared when they hear that some guy is responsible for attacking us and now he's building a nuclear arsenal. They feel better about themselves when they hear that there was no big bad bomb, but that it was all about spreading liberty. Yeah, we're ignorant. But nobody here really wants to force anybody else to be like us, people simply don't care.

Oh, and before you tag me as flamebait, I just wanted to say that i'm a left-leaning libertarian.

tdk. [/quote]