What the World Really Wants

There are several misconceptions that many well meaning Americans have about their world. The first is that their government has their best interests in mind. I admit, at one time I believed this was true. Then I began to understand the hidden military industrial complex and it's assault on our environment, our pocket books and our way of life. The Bush Administration has made more progess towards reversing the trend towards a growing middle class in America that was begun by FDR during the Great Depression.
Secondly, Americans believe that the US is a beacon of democracy and freedom for the world. While this may still have been true six years ago, it no longer is.
Fareed Zakaria is a writer for Newsweek who I've quoted twice before because of his willingness to tell the truth, particularly the part of world reality that America, by and large, just doesn't understand. Here is an excerpt from his latest article.

The Bush administration describes spreading democracy as the lodestar of its foreign policy. It speaks about democracy constantly and has expanded funding for programs associated with it. The administration sees itself as giving voice to the hundreds of millions who are oppressed around the world. And yet the prevailing image of the United States in those lands is not at all as a beacon of liberty. Public sentiment almost everywhere sees the United States as self-interested and arrogant.


[...]Why? Well, consider Vice President Cheney's speech on May 4 in Lithuania, in which he accused Russia of backpedaling on democracy. Cheney was correct in his specific criticisms.


[...]But to speak as Cheney did last week misunderstands the reality in that country, and squanders America's ability to have an impact in it. [...] In Cheney's narrative, Russia was a blooming democracy during the 1990s, but in recent years it has turned into a sinister dictatorship where people live in fear. In castigating Vladimir Putin, Cheney believes that he is speaking for the Russian masses. He fancies himself as Reagan at the Berlin wall. Except he isn't. Had Cheney done his homework and consulted a few opinion polls, which are extensive and reliable in Russia, he would have discovered that Putin has a 75 percent approval rating, about twice that of President Bush.


[...]Or consider Nigeria. American officials have been debating how to help that country, by ensuring that its elected president, Olusegun Obasanjo, would not run for a third term (which would have required amending election laws). Last week the Nigerian Senate ruled out a third term, and Washington applauded. But in fact this whole drama is largely irrelevant to what is really happening in Nigeria. Over the last 25 years, the country has gone into free fall. Its per capita GDP has collapsed, writes Jeffrey Tayler in the April issue of The Atlantic, from $1,000 to $390. It ranks below Haiti and Bangladesh on the Human Development Index. In 2004 the World Bank estimated that 80 percent of Nigeria's oil wealth goes to 1 percent of its people. Sectarian tensions are rising, particularly between Muslims and Christians, and 12 of the country's 36 provinces have imposed Sharia. Violent conflict permeates the country, with 10,000 people dead over the last eight years. In this context, Obasanjo's third term is really not the big issue that will determine Nigeria's future. (Obasanjo has actually presided over a series of important improvements, which will probably collapse in his absence.) But these are the only issues that we talk about, because we're spreading democracy.


The United States should stand for and help promote freedom around the world. But we can do so effectively only if we ally ourselves with the aspirations of the people we are trying to help. For many of them, the great struggle going on in so much of the world today is to end civil strife, corruption, extreme poverty and disease, which destroy not just democracy but society itself. And on those issues, I don't think I've ever heard a speech by Dick Cheney. MORE