http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/07/1706/Is It Anti-Americanism or Just Anti-Bushism?
by Robert S. McElvaine
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During the three months in which we visited most parts of the country, we never found a single New Zealander who was not baffled as to how the American people could have re-elected Mr. Bush. And I am not talking only about the usual suspects in the academic world. People running bed-and-breakfasts in small towns and rural areas, small-business owners, farmers, service station owners - they might not agree on much else, but they all agreed that Mr. Bush has been a disaster for the United States and the world.
We did not ask everyone we met, and there surely are a few Kiwis who like President Bush. But Americans who fancy that what others think of us doesn’t matter would do well to consider what it means for the future when the people of a nation in many ways similar to the United States have so overwhelmingly turned against our president and his policies.
The fact is, Mr. Bush took, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 2001, the greatest worldwide outpouring of good will the United States has enjoyed at least since World War II and squandered it by pursuing a foolish invasion of Iraq, ignoring international organizations and world opinion, and declaring that it is the right of the United States to engage in pre-emptive war and invade any country it wishes to.
The Ugly American was interred in 2001. In 2003, George W. Bush resurrected him.
How can we know whether the hostility the woman from Colorado experienced in Australia was anti-Americanism or anti-Bushism? Beyond our own radically different experience when we made it clear that we oppose the Bush approach to the world, there is this:
Here in Port Douglas, we found several restaurants displaying photographs of Bill Clinton in their front windows. Business is booming. Mr. Clinton had visited the town as president in 1996 and happened to be in Port Douglas again on Sept. 11, 2001, when there was no anti-Americanism here. Can anyone doubt what would happen to business if these establishments replaced the Clinton portrait with one of his successor?
At its core, the widespread anti-Americanism one sees in so much of the world today is actually extreme animosity toward a single leader. A new administration with clearly different policies could quickly turn things around.