Love me, love me not

Fouad Ajami, a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins, has written a great article about foreigners' low opinion of America. Some excerpts:

The Pew survey tells us that some foreign precincts show a landslide victory for Barack Obama. France leads the pack; fully 84% of those following the American campaign are confident Mr. Obama will do the right thing in foreign policy.

I can see the bumper sticker: Surrender monkeys for Obama.

There is no need to roam distant lands in search of indictments of America's ways. Tales of our demise appear every day in our media. Yes, it is not perfect, this republic of ours. But the possibilities for emancipation and self-improvement it affords are unmatched in other lands.

Especially for women, I suspect. I remain amazed at how many meetings and conferences I go to in Asia and see almost all men.

The great battle over the Iraq war has subsided, and Europeans who ponder the burning grounds of the Islamic world know the distinction between fashionable anti-Americanism and the international order underpinned by American power. George W. Bush may have been indifferent to political protocol, but he held the line when it truly mattered, and the Europeans have come to understand that appeasement of dictators and brigands begets its own troubles.

This is Robert Kagan's point. It sends most journalists into speechless, keyboard pounding rage.

It is one thing to rail against the Pax Americana. But after the pollsters are gone, the truth of our contemporary order of states endures. We live in a world held by American power – and benevolence. Nothing prettier, or more just, looms over the horizon.

Yup.