James Taranto passed this on from blogger James Lileks on Kerry’s blaming George Bush for making the world mad at us. (Leave aside the implicit altruism of the alleged complaints):
Is the world angry at Russia, which spends nothing on AIDS and rebuffed Kyoto? Is the world angry at China, which got a pass on Kyoto and spends nothing on AIDS for other countries?
Is the world angry at North Korea for killings its people? Angry at Iran for smothering that vibrant nation with corrupt and thuggish mullocracy? Angry at Syria for occupying Lebanon? Angry at Saudi Arabia for its denial of women’s rights? Angry at Russia for corrupt elections? Is the world angry at China for threatening Taiwan, or angry at France for joining the Chinese in joint military exercises that threatened the island on the eve of an election? Is the world angry at Zimbabwe for stealing land and starving people? Is the world angry at Pakistan for selling nuclear secrets? Is the world angry at Libya for having an NBC program?
Is the world angry at the thugs of Fallujah?
Is the world angry at anyone besides America and Israel?
But even if you admit that the world is angry at America – so angry that the poorest of them can’t wait to come here and stake a claim - you have to stand in awe at the sheer political idiocy of Kerry’s conclusion. Boiled down:
There are countless numbers of things that we could be do minimize the kind of anger and … almost recruitment that has taken place in terrorist organizations as a result of the way the administration has behaved.
By toppling the fascists in Baghdad without French seal of approval, we have encouraged recruitment in terrorist organizations. It’s not the invasion that ticked off the Man in the Arab Street, it’s the lack of a 17th UN resolution on Iraq. Right now in a café in Beirut an educated man, a chemist by trade, schooled in the ways of the West, is reading an article about how the US will only spent $15 billion on AIDS and probably won’t reduce its carbon emissions to 1817 levels, and he throws down the paper in disgust: bastards! I must join Al Qaeda, move to Iraq and kill the contractors who are upgrading their outmoded infrastructure!
If there is such a man, well, I’m angry at him. Do I get to be angry at him? No? Okay. I’ll sit down now.
But who goes on to ask: Why are they angry at the U.S. and not at the others?
The answer is: Because we are big and powerful, and they’re not–it’s the implicit premise of altruism, where the successful are wrong because they’re successful, and the unsuccessful are right because they’re unsuccessful. But don’t count on conservatives to identify that premise.