Does the world really hate us ? I doubt it. What they are saying is

you gave us ideals we never even thought about and now you are the ones who have forsaken us.Who do we turn to in our time of need?

With over a hundred military bases around the world you can be sure we are showing them our power. These people must know they have better leave MacDonald's alone or we move in with tanks and guns. Empires have always moved in with guns to back up business. Get with it and look in your history book. Why do you think England sent it's army to India or here? Now it seems to be our turn to push people around even if you do not want it, do you have any say? Are the corp going to be more important than people? Ask the people of Iraq? Brenner in one pen sweep made most of the businesses in that country open to any American corp that wanted them. Is that not a good reason to hate us? How would you feel if the army of Iraq stepped in to your town after Bush signed its water company over to a corp that could ask any price it wanted for that water?

most people has been based on the ideals it has come to embody.Those ideals are now shattered.So, our position after Bush is even worse in some respects than the simple math you have listed. The price we are going to pay may be even more severe in the years ahead.

...is that power is a lot more than arms. There are many different kinds of power, among them economic and diplomatic. Bush has failed miserably with the last two. If it wanted, the rest of the world could give us an economic "comeuppance" that has never seen before.


Cher

Guerrilla war has not been a good winner for the people fighting it. If I recall right that group in Germany had well less than 100 men in it and kept Germany on edge and people dead for a good 20 or so years.Same with the Irish and Brits. We have turned a world class religion on to us and you can think that their is a good deal more than under 100 people who would like to see us gone.Besides that we have been pushing our way of life into the whole world and not always in a nice way. I can recall the fuss 'The Ugly American' made when it came out and that had to be pre-Vietnam or when we first sent a few army people to that country.So we are in an endless war and many people in this country are happy with that. Bush for one. I would like to see this all pulled down some what.

Chalmers Johnson puts the number over 700.

http://www.alternet.org/story/17563

It's not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and has another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least $113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries -- and an estimated $591,519.8 million to replace all of them. The military high command deploys to our overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more.

These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11.

For Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, which has been an American military colony for the past 58 years, the report deceptively lists only one Marine base, Camp Butler, when in fact Okinawa "hosts" ten Marine Corps bases, including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma occupying 1,186 acres in the center of that modest-sized island's second largest city. (Manhattan's Central Park, by contrast, is only 843 acres.) The Pentagon similarly fails to note all of the $5-billion-worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases in other people's countries, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure, although it has been distinctly on the rise in recent years.

For their occupants, these are not unpleasant places to live and work. Military service today, which is voluntary, bears almost no relation to the duties of a soldier during World War II or the Korean or Vietnamese wars. Most chores like laundry, KP ("kitchen police"), mail call, and cleaning latrines have been subcontracted to private military companies like Kellogg, Brown & Root, DynCorp, and the Vinnell Corporation. Fully one-third of the funds recently appropriated for the war in Iraq (about $30 billion), for instance, are going into private American hands for exactly such services. Where possible everything is done to make daily existence seem like a Hollywood version of life at home. According to the Washington Post, in Fallujah, just west of Baghdad, waiters in white shirts, black pants, and black bow ties serve dinner to the officers of the 82nd Airborne Division in their heavily guarded compound, and the first Burger King has already gone up inside the enormous military base we've established at Baghdad International Airport.

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We are, in this country, so indoctrinated in every way with the notion that we are superior that we unconsciously parrot that line even as we criticize ourselves.

The US has given many people all over the globe good and sufficient reason to hate us by using force to support oppressive dictatorships that protect our economic interests. What is it we are using - 70% of the world's resources? Our prosperity comes at a price to the rest of the globe.

And we deserve that hatred because we are willfully blind to the actions of our own government, preferring ignorance to the possibility that we might have to alter OUR life-style in some way.

"gave them ideals"...pfft!

I feel proud that we are the first ones on the block to rush assistance to countries that need help during famine, earthquakes or other natural or manmade disasters.With due respect, I believe that our Declaration of Rights stands as a unique document that recognizes the equality of all men and, with all our faults, we have been moving toward that ideal for the past two hundred and twenty five years.

I recognize, however, that our arrogance and hamhandedness and our voracious appetite for natural resources has been a cause of suffering in many parts of the world.I hope we can reduce our profligate ways of living but I wouldn't bet on it happening anytime soon seeing how my own children and grandchildren consume material goods.A more thoughtful President than Bush can engage our population on these questions but I doubt such a President is even capable of being elected.

of this country has no idea where it fits in in the global scheme of things and doesn't really care to know. Take any country in the ME you've got virtually the entire citezenry that is aware of the great U.S. of A which, in turn, makes them aware of thier own country's place in the global scheme, deplorable as we may make them feel for it.

Point being that these ideals that we think we graciously bestow on backward, savage nations all over the world is precisely the problem with America. A problem that the world community will not put up with for too long a time. China and India have economies that are growing at increasing rates, they're turning out more educated populations, they're more efficient, and BOTH countries have about three times as many people as the states.

who do know our place in the scheme of things, I still believe that what happened in this country in 1776 has a unique place.For the first time in history people said that all people, not just some aristocrats, have inalienable rights endowed by God.I think this is unique.Countries like China and India still believe that some people are more equal than others and this is the gift that I think we can be rightly proud of.Sure, we have strayed from our own ideals in many ignoble ways but the intent of the original revoloutionaries that formed this nation was noble and unique.

and there are ways of holding up and preserving said noble and unique ideas for mankind (the ones that draw many Chinese and Indian people to this country) without indicting every other country in the world that hasn't yet "seen the light" as backward. (Not insinuating that you said that, just what shrubco sees fit to do) What's worse is the current administration whose main goal is to traipse all over the world to snatch up the remaining oil reserves under the guise of "spreading freedom". Myself, I don't see the point in engaging self-congratulatory praise of ourselves or the FFs for the unique invention of individual liberty, as unique and special a concept as it is. I see our role (and beleive the FFs would too) as continually trying to improve on that concept.. You can't continue to improve on it, however, when you have half of the nation beleving that the hard work is done and all we have to do is kick back, enjoy the oil and doughnuts, and spread freedom all over the world. (under bushs' rhetoric, when he talks about "spreading freedom", I can't help but have the image of a toddler smearing some kind of gook all over a wall - it's wierd, but it's the only image that comes to mind every time he says "spread freedom")

edit: spelling

And of the efforts to actually IMPLEMENT its' principles - an ongoing and far from over struggle, as your post indicates. Nor is it quite unique, or sprung full-blown from the pens of the Founders...its' roots are in the writings of the Enlightenment (and perhaps also the ?Iroquois? Federation, which has been suggested by some as having served as a model). Which is not a criticism of the Founders, there is nothing wrong in building upon the work of many others.

We just despise Bush for being a very dangerous idiot. We can't believe that he's going to be allowed to be President again, and he is, isn't he? Be honest. But then many countries (including mine) are headed by idiots, many of them dangerous.

Your post seems to suggest, though, that the rest of us in the world are bumbling along waiting for the US to save us "in our time of need." There's a world outside America that managed to get by for thousands of years before the US existed. God knows how we did it without Macdonalds and "Friends" and all the other valuable stuff that we never realised we needed. We watch you trying to grow up as a country and you seem to be going backwards. Really, I'm not attacking you personally, I just find your post a bit puzzling.

"You gave us ideals we never even thought about" - what exactly does this mean. You can't seriously think that the world looks to America for any kind of spiritual or moral guidance?

out of our history from Europe, England mostly. Just look at our laws and how they went all over the country. Only La. has Fr. law. Nothing about our country is so much better than the rest of the world we are just rich. When you put an army in a country you get a lot of power. Not that I think it is right it is just done. People just keep saying we have the bast country in the world when many countries have a lot better things, like education and health care and a more peaceful life.I would be called anti-Am for saying it, but their it is a fact.Well we face it? Hardly.

but we do have, for example, a (Socialised) Health Service. Set up by a left-wing government, because all citizens should have access to health care and medicine; it's one of the responsibilities of a government, to _care_ for its citizens. Yet this is one of the things that US right-wingers often sneer at, as if it were somehow a sign of inferiority or shame to be poor and in need of medical treatment. I just can't understand this point of view.

We have a bad history of invading other countries and cultures, leading to, in extreme cases, slavery. We have learned from these mistakes - it would be good to think that others could look back and learn from them too. Yet I look at the American administration and I see the same old building-an-empire/ruling as much of the world as possible crap. It's easy to justify vicious interference in another country if you are encouraged to think/believe that everyone else is inferior and that you know better than they do what's good for them. Hence the "We'll bring democracy to them" justification for recent events. What if they don't want it? What if their complex, very old (in American terms) culture makes them see life in a very different way which you can't possibly understand? If you make no effort to understand other people then you are just imposing your view of what they need onto their culture. Then they _will_ fight back and when that happens it's just not good enough to call them terrorists and make up pathetic hate-slogans like "They hate us for our freedom".

I tend to agree with you. I keep thinking that we are very young as far as countries go, and we don't realize that other societies have learned from their mistakes and the hubris of their leaders and might be examples for us to learn from.

We are blindly making those mistakes right now, and I am afraid, like a teenager who "knows it all" we won't learn a thing until our actions come back to destroy us. Our government is run by dangerous, immature fools who don't understand the long term impact of their actions and decisions.

people in positions of responsibility, in my experience, fear us, and the way we use our power, and may continue to use it, in the hands of Bush; most ordinary people I've met are friendly, and do not bring up Bush or political issues (I'm not sure what that means); twice, we have encountered open hostility on the street.

and as in the ME they've hated our policy there... for many years. It's all spilling over now. Shrub was kinda match to tinder I'm afraid. And it's up to us to understand that because he's our president (ugh!), so we're the only ones who can fix it, i.e. give the world somebody they can deal with.

Will we get the message? :shrug: Those of us who engage in armchair foreign policy on the left do, but on the right? I have my sincere doubts.

edit: clarifying. They don't hate us as individuals who happen to share the planet; they hate what we do in the world.

I think the world was willing to give us a pass on Chimpy the first time. Now that we've had 4 years of him, I think the world figures if we let him back in office, then we must agree with his policies, and at that point, I don't think there's much point in planning a foreign trip for a while...

Not unless you get off on being spat upon. and if that fucker does get back in, I'm not so sure we wouldn't deserve to be spat upon...

.... and we have a chance to set that right come Nov. 2. :)

yes...I do wonder

... and the fact that we wonder is what makes us Dems :)

Sometimes it really is midnight in a perfect world.

Seems I'm always crashing the same car...

When Clinton was in office, the world was beginning to like the US. Just four years ago...

When the rest of the world's citizens come to the realization that American greed and misuse of the world's resources is causing them to be poor, they will revolt.

When they do revolt, America had best be ready to repent. As it stands right now, America is the big bully just daring anyone to take a shot whilst we steal their treasure.

America is a minority in the world. The only reason we have any respect from the majority is America's ideals of Liberty and Justice for All. When we don't spread those two ideas we lose that respect. Clinton spread those ideas, B*sh is being nothing more than a bully.

be anti-Americanism, but it prob used to be 20% of the world's population and mainly complaints about American pop culture (movies, McDonald's etc) taking over the world. Now it's more like 80% and mainly due to the war in Iraq, lack of diplomacy etc.

By incorporating these two concepts into the actions of our government, many of our problems will be solved.