From OfByandFor.org
Roger Cohen (NYT): The War on Terror: An Obsession the World Doesn’t Share
The United States has a strategic problem:its war on terror, unlike its long fight against Communism, is not universally seen as the pivotal global struggle of the age.
Rather, it is often portrayed abroad as a distraction from more critical issues – as an American attempt to impose a bellicose culture, driven by the cultivation of fear, on a world still taken with the notion that the cold war’s end and technology’s advance have opened unprecedented possibilities for dialogue and peace.
Often we Americans presume that because something matters a great deal to us, it automatically matters to everyone on the planet. Cohen’s article says the data don’t support this.