The U.S. doesn’t have the greatest international image. Who woulda guessed?
Favorable views of the United States dropped sharply over the past year in Spain, where only 23 percent said they had a positive opinion, down from 41 percent last year, according to the survey. It was done in 15 nations, including the United States, this spring by the Washington-based Pew Research Center.
Other countries where positive views dropped significantly include India (56 percent, down from 71 percent); Russia (43 percent, down from 52 percent); and Indonesia (30 percent, down from 38 percent). In Turkey, only 12 percent said they held a favorable opinion, down from 23 percent last year.
Declines were less steep in France, Germany and Jordan, while people in China and Pakistan had a slightly more favorable image of the United States this year than last. In Britain, Washington’s closest ally in the Iraq war, positive views of America have remained in the mid-50-percent range in the past two years, down sharply from 75 percent in 2002, before the war.
No one likes the schoolyard bully, even if they’re willing to bend to his will.
“Obviously, when you get many more people saying that the U.S. presence in Iraq is a threat to world peace as say that about Iran, it’s a measure of how much Iraq is sapping good will to the United States,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.
Yes, I would say it is.
And Americans apparently have our heads in the sand about a lot of things:
Only 75 percent of Americans had heard reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, while 90 percent of Western Europeans and Japanese had heard about them.