David Ignatius has a totally bizarre op-ed today on why Americans have to stop desiring love from the rest of the planet because they just hate us no matter what we do -- counterintuitive, no? Unfortunately, in order to get there, Ignatius had to pen the type of op-ed in which the world warps and events are excised and the whole messy history of the five years gets distilled into a nice, clean, "America, FUCK YEAH!", arc:
For a people who want to be loved as much as Americans do, these are trying times. People around the world see our troubles in Iraq and say we had it coming. They hear us talk about Arab democracy and think we're trying to steal their oil. Some even take a kind of perverse satisfaction in seeing us battered by monster hurricanes.
[...]
An uncharitable world expects America to act in its own interests, and so we should. We promote democracy and anti-terrorism not because these are universal ideals, but because they serve America's need for a more stable world. We will never convince the rest of the world that we aren't acting selfishly, no matter what we say.
To hear Ignatius talk, the only foreign policy initiative the Bush administration has pursued in the past five years was opening Egypt up to multiparty democracy. The Iraqi war and the imaginary WMD's it was based on -- never happened. Unquestioning support for Israel during the pre-pullout years? Not at an issue. Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, protected oil fields, looted museums, the Kyoto pullout, Iraqi elections that Sistani forced against our objections -- never heard of them. The problem with the rest of the world is that no matter how good, virtuous, and kind America is, they'll never like us. And so long as you believe that, admitting that we've spent the last five years handing out wedgies, noogies, and the dreaded purple nurple to whomever ended up in our path is totally beside the point.
