When an incumbent President is running for reelection it is a referendum on his performance on the previous four years over which he presided. One of the main questions asked during a Presidential reelection bid is: Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Now being better off encompasses many things. There are economic considerations, social considerations, civil rights considerations, foreign policy considerations just to name a few. The one I want to point out is the fact that we are no longer looked at as a friendly nation to the rest of the world we are now looked at as an aggressive country, with imperial aspirations.

There has been an ever rising tide of hatred towards our country's foreign policy decisions from the rest of the world, since a few months after 9/11. It was increasing before that -- our opting out of Kyoto and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty -- but immediately after 9/11 there was an outpouring of goodwill to us from the world because of that day. Since then this administration has done many things to squander that goodwill. The list is too long but the two main reasons that it was squandered was our unilateral war of choice on Iraq and our inability to be a fair and impartial broker for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These are the main causes of the current hatred towards our country and for our isolation. But there are many more:

Since George Bush took over the White House, the United States has refused to sign on to, refused to ratify, or outright cancelled many treaties and agreements. The Anti-Ballistic missile Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Convention on the Prohibition of Landmines, the Small Arms Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Kyoto Global Warming Accord, the International Criminal Court, and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflicts (Child Soldier Protocol), have all been weakened, undermined, or cancelled due the Bush administration?s refusal to participate.

It becomes apparent that when the rest of the world is together on these issues and we decide to opt out that some friction is only natural. But it should not surprise anyone that as the issues add up it is moving from friction to something worse.

So now we have to talk about what will happen if the current administration is left in power. I think that most people and countries around the world understand that sometimes people make mistakes or, like in 2000, during prosperous times people don't pay enough attention to what is important. Most people around the world understand that the election, or whatever you want to call it, of George W. Bush for a single term is not an indictment of the American people as being for what is currently happening. Nobody ever expected it to turn out like this. But since it has if he is elected this time it will be seen by the world as an endorsement, by the American people, of the policies of his first term. Many people in foreign countries say that we don't hate the American people we just hate the president. If this President is reelected it will go a long way to getting the rest of the world to hating more than just the President.

Check out this article that is about two years old
Why we still don't get it, one year on
I spent six months traveling the world before and after September 11, gathering impressions about my homeland. I interviewed a wide range of people in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Today, as the Bush administration prepares to attack Iraq, I recall a comment by Ana, an intellectual in Barcelona, shortly after September 11: "Many of us have American friends, but we wish they would think a little more about their government, because we have to live with America's politics, and that is often difficult, especially when war is in the air."
- posted by Mom/Dad @ 12:14 PM