U.S. has more to fear than terrorism

MEDFORD, Mass. “”mdash; At the recent meeting of the United
Nations, everyone was expecting President Ahmadinejad of Iran to
dominate the press and be the loudest critic of the U.S. in front
of the General Assembly. However, the person to make the biggest
splash last week was not the president of Iran but rather President
Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

What exactly did Chávez say? Referring to President
Bush’s earlier appearance, Chávez said at the podium,
“The devil came here yesterday, right here. It smells of
sulfur still today, this table I am now standing in front
of.”

The comment prompted horrified gasps and giggles all around the
General Assembly. The sad part is that there were quite a few
half-hidden smiles and genuine chuckles.

One can make the argument that these reactions are a result of
the Bush administration’s foreign policy. There is no
question that since Sept. 11, the U.S. has taken an understandably
more aggressive stance, but the results have been upsetting a lot
of countries.

There were probably better ways of going about it, like making
sure you were not defending the invasion of a country based on
false information and isolating all of your allies ““ but no
one can change that now.

One has to look past Chávez’s words to see a new
threat forming from anti-Americanism, and this time, it is not in
the form of new terrorists.

Two weeks ago in Havana, a group of 118 countries met (including
Venezuela, Iran, North Korea and Syria) to discuss Iran’s
rights in the nuclear debate and the overbearing United States. Now
there is the threat of these countries working more closely
together to make life tough for the United States. Not only will
this make reversing anti-American sentiments around the world more
difficult, but it will make achieving any of our goals much
harder.

Bush contributed to the beginning of this war of insults. He
didn’t think ahead when using ultimatums (“with us or
against us”) and calling countries part of an “axis of
evil.” Now America is going to have a hard time maintaining
its influence around the world with all these countries continually
pecking away at its reputation.

America’s problems seem to be piling up and our influence
slowly slipping away. One might think that would lead to a
re-thinking of our foreign policy; however, our current
administration is nothing but single-mindedly stubborn, refusing to
change anything no matter what evidence appears to show that its
current ways are not working.

With the chuckles about our president being the devil as proof,
feelings abroad about the United States will not be warming up any
time soon.

Granshaw is a columnist for The Tufts Daily at Tufts
University.