Why Is America Unloved?

Few countries are as widely misunderstood, misinterpreted, -and misspoken of as the United States. Neither friend nor foe spares her. Some challenge her ways, others question her purposes. She is called mercenary and missionary, extravagant and miserly, impatient, imprudent, unwise. Yet even her wildest detractors subconsciously recognize her as the most successful society in achieving the broadest distribution of affluence.

We must recognize that unlike any other country in history the United States is present in the daily lives of men everywhere. Recently on an island in the Persian Gulf I looked out the window of the Hilton Hotel and saw an American truck carrying vegetables and fruits to the market. The dust it raised enveloped the American bulldozers building a new highway. The hotel carpark was crowded with American cars. One of the two movie houses was topped by a portrait of Marlon Brando; the other proudly announced a new John Wayne film. In the pharmacy close by, a Squibb girl smiled at passersby with ivory teeth; in the small, sandy newsstand, Nixon’s picture stared out of the front page of the local paper, and American starlets winked from the covers of Arabic magazines. Few of the inhabitants had ever met an American —and yet their daily lives were permeated by American influences.

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Nuri Eren

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Few countries are as widely misunderstood, misinterpreted, -and misspoken of as the United States. Neither friend nor foe spares her. Some challenge her ways, others question her purposes. She is called mercenary and missionary, extravagant and miserly, impatient, imprudent, unwise. Yet even her wildest detractors subconsciously recognize her as the most successful society in achieving the broadest distribution of affluence.

We must recognize that unlike any other country in history the United States is present in the daily lives of men everywhere. Recently on an island in the Persian Gulf I looked out the window of the Hilton Hotel and saw an American truck carrying vegetables and fruits to the market. The dust it raised enveloped the American bulldozers building a new highway. The hotel carpark was crowded with American cars. One of the two movie houses was topped by a portrait of Marlon Brando; the other proudly announced a new John Wayne film. In the pharmacy close by, a Squibb girl smiled at passersby with ivory teeth; in the small, sandy newsstand, Nixon’s picture stared out of the front page of the local paper, and American starlets winked from the covers of Arabic magazines. Few of the inhabitants had ever met an American —and yet their daily lives were permeated by American influences.