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[casi] Why even allies are now anti-US



Thanks to Ajo Ito and the Al-Awda list, best, f.

I tend to veer away from political comment, but this struck such a cord.
Worldwide at and after 9/11, politics were rightly put aside and human
tragedy struck a resonance on which old enmities and rifts, internationally,
could have been mended, trusts tentatively built. The memorial to lives so
tragically memorably lost, could have been so unique - a chance to make
those lost lives an eternal legacy to peace.

It has been squandered on a pyre of illegal acts, detentions without trial,
mediaeval cagings, denial of minimal access to due process, 'disappearing'
people of whom not even their names are allowed to be known. Injustice won
on 11th September, justice too was buried in the Twin Towers and only blind
vengeance and oil pipelines sought in response. Another historically
shameful legacy.



The following was plugged by Democrats.com (usa based)
E Montes
Montreal, Canada

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/world/story/0,1870,137566,00.html?
Why even allies are now anti-US

Unilateral plan to oust Saddam


One-sided support for Israel


Rejection of world criminal court


Blanket arrest of terror suspects


Steel tariffs and farm subsidies


Refusal to back global warming pact

OXFORD (Britain) - The stockpile of global sympathy
and goodwill for the United States after Sept 11 has
dissipated - replaced by a rising anti-American
sentiment that has turned into a contagion now
spreading across the globe.

Anti-Americanism is no longer limited to religious
radicals and terrorists who resent the US, but is
infecting even the US' most important allies in
Europe.


No longer sympathetic with a post-Sept 11 America,
protestors in London vent their anger against US
foreign policy on Iraq and other world issues. -- USA
TODAY
Analysts blame this on a series of new US policies
widely considered to be selfish and unilateral,
including President George W. Bush's plans to topple
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Here in Britain, the US' staunchest friend, snide
remarks and downright animosity greet many Americans
these days.

In virulent prose, newspapers criticise the US.
Politicians attack its foreign policies ferociously,
especially its plans to attack Iraq.

And regular citizens launch into tirades with American
friends and visitors.

What happened, many Americans are wondering, to all
that global goodwill?

'It was squandered,' said Mr Meghnad Desai, director
of the Institute for Global Governance at the London
School of Economics and Political Science and a member
of the House of Lords.

'America dissipated the goodwill out of its arrogance
and incompetence. A lot of people who would never,
ever have considered themselves anti-American are now
very distressed with the US.'

Recent US policies - stretching back to Mr Bush's
refusal last year to support the treaty on global
warming - have drawn flak for being selfish and
unilateral.

Many are enraged by Mr Bush's support for steel
tariffs and farm subsidies, his refusal to involve the
US in the new International Criminal Court and what is
widely regarded abroad as one-sided support for Israel
and its prime minister, Mr Ariel Sharon.

The rash of corporate malfeasance and the blanket
arrest of terrorism suspects after Sept 11 has given
further fuel to critics, who say the US preaches
democracy, human rights and free enterprise - but
doesn't practise them.

In a recent article in Policy Review magazine, Mr
Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said
the divide between the US and Europe was getting wider
than ever as they went their different ways - one with
a foreign policy based on unilateralism and coercion,
the other based on diplomacy and persuasion.

Europeans, he said, had 'come to view the United tates
simply as a rogue colossus, in many respects a bigger
threat to their pacific ideals than Iraq or Iran'.

In Germany earlier this month, Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder launched his re-election campaign by
denouncing what he derisively called Mr Bush's
proposed military 'adventures' in Iraq.

In Britain, the new head of the Anglican Church and
other bishops circulated a petition proclaiming any
attack on Iraq illegal and immoral.

Mr Peter Peterson, chairman of the US Council for
Foreign Relations, said: 'Around the world, from
Western Europe to the Far East, many see the US as
arrogant, hypocritical, self-absorbed, self-indulgent
and contemptuous of others.

'This is not a Muslim country issue. It has
metastasised to the rest of the world and some of our
closest European allies.' --USA Today


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