In the words of Paul McDermott Americans don't care what the rest of the world thinks of them. Mainly because Amnericans still havn't grasped the concept of 'The Rest of the World'
I think that is a pretty fair statment - most Americans I've spoken to, whether in person or online, haven't really got much of an idea of what occurs outside America (or, the glossed over Middle East atm) mainly because American government/media feeds the public so much propaganda that they get a rather distorted picture anyway.
I think it's more double standards of the Governments that annoy the rest of the world. Arming the likes of Osama Bin Laden to fight the Soviets, Helping Iraq to win the war against Iran - and ignoring the human rights violations them such as the gasing of Kurds, because it suited their cause.
Africa, however, is a big reason to question the United States. In 1986, the US was found guilty by the World Court of “unlawful use of violence” (international terrorism) for its actions in Nicaragua. Ther States then promptly vetoed a Security Council resolution, leaving them unaccountable for their actions.
Furthermore, in 1998 under Clinton, America bombed the Al-Shifa plant in Sudan to 'find terrorism'. They believed the plant had the potential to created Biological Weapons. As a result of the destruction of the plant, livesaving medicines the facility once produced were no longer available, causing Sudans death toll to quietly rise from the original bombing, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of people - many of them children - to malaria, tuberculosis, and other treatable diseases. Al-Shifa provided affordable medicine for humans and all the locally available veterinary medicine in Sudan. It produced 90 percent of Sudan’s major pharmaceutical products. Sanctions against Sudan make it impossible to import adequate amounts of medicines required to cover the serious gap left by the plant’s destruction. Sudan no longer had access to the medicine required for Malaria, or treatment for TB, as the Plant was the only one producing TB drugs-for more than 100,000 patients, at about 1 British pound a month. Al-Shifa was also the only factory making veterinary drugs in the mostly pastoralist country. Its specialty was drugs to kill the parasites which pass from herds to herders, one of Sudan's principal causes of infant mortality. Furthermore, Sudan lost a major export base. Look at Sudan now, the nation is in Civil War.
As someone mentioned - America is against WMD, planning pre-emptive strikes on those who have the 'potential' to create them, yet the USA is the only nation in history to ever have used them.
