Anti-Americanism: It's Not Just For Democrats Anymore

The editor in chief of Foreign Policy spews some serious anti-American sentiments in today's WaPo:

The world wants America back.

For the next several years, world politics will be reshaped by a strong yearning for American leadership. This trend will be as unexpected as it is inevitable: unexpected given the powerful anti-American sentiments around the globe, and inevitable given the vacuums that only the United States can fill.

This renewed international appetite for U.S. leadership will not merely result from the election of a new president, though having a new occupant in the White House will certainly help. Almost a decade of U.S. disengagement and distraction have allowed international and regional problems to swell. Often, the only nation that has the will and means to act effectively is the United States.

I find it interesting that Nicolas Sarkozy ran on a platform of a stronger alliance with America and President Bush and won. Angela Merkel of Germany has also allied herself with the US and W so the line of thought that Mr. Naim lays out is at least misleading if not outright false. The only leader with strong ties to the President who has lost is John Howard and that had as much to do with his being in power for more than a decade than anything else.

Let's continue:

Of course, the America that the world wants back is not the one that preemptively invades potential enemies, bullies allies or disdains international law. The demand is for an America that rallies other nations prone to sitting on the fence while international crises are boiling out of control; for a superpower that comes up with innovative initiatives to tackle the great challenges of the day, such as climate change, nuclear proliferation and violent Islamist fundamentalism. The demand is for an America that enforces the rules that facilitate international commerce and works effectively to stabilize an accident-prone global economy. Naturally, the world also wants a superpower willing to foot the bill with a largess that no other nation can match.

Now we're getting to the point. Mr. Naim wants an America that is as liberal as he is and one that cedes leadership to the thieving band of thugs that occupy offices in the UN building. He wants the assistance to continue but wants the checks signed by Obama, Edwards on Clinton instead of George W. Bush. He wants an America where we "foot the bill" for liberal causes like global warming. Note he doesn't mention Darfur, a curious omission being that it is the most pressing humanitarian crisis on the planet. Perhaps because he knows it would take a military invasion to save the oppressed and that invasion would of course be "preemptive".

Maybe Mr. Naim was in some resort like Bali attending a global warming summit when the US went to the UN and stated our case for taking out Saddam who had laughed at every UN resolution that was passed against his murderous regime. Or maybe he was enjoying the largess of Kofi Annan's son who was at the time taking money hand over fist from Saddam resulting in the starving of children in Iraq.

Sorry Mr. Naim, we have given tens of billions of dollars to fight AIDS in Africa and were critical to the recovery efforts in Indonesia after the tsunami. We're the same America we always were when it comes to helping the world but we've made the conscious decision to do it with selected allies and have decided to eschew the ineffectual and corrupt UN when doing it. And that is just what has Naim upset one suspects.

Update: More at Newsbusters and Publius Pundit.