Each of the Arab capitals, as expected, has its own American ambassador, but few realize that for the last 18 months the “Arab street” has had one too, an ambassador whose job is to sell the United States and US foreign policy to ordinary Arabs, inspiring them to admire America and its social values.

The job, done by Christopher Ross, the Arabic-speaking Oriental studies expert and former ambassador to Syria, is a tough one indeed, given the fact that in the period since Sept. 11, 2001, the US image in the region has declined precipitously.

Today, the percentage of Arabs with a favorable opinion of the United States, according to a poll released recently by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which measured public opinion in 44 nations during the fall of 2002, is in the single digits. And it is likely that this statistic will fall further still while George Bush remains president, and continues to consider Ariel Sharon, an 800-pound gorilla with an appetite to match for gobbling up land and stomping on people, a “man of peace” for whom the administration has signaled its strong support — virtually a carte blanche — for cracking down on Palestinians in recent weeks.

The fact of the matter is that the US these days has an image problem, not just in the Middle East but elsewhere in the world, where the number of people holding a favorable view of it has plunged dramatically. Last summer, for example, according to the Pew poll, the percentage of Germans who viewed America positively was 61 percent. Today it is 45 percent. In France, the figure declined from 63 percent to 43 percent. In Spain, US favorability ratings are down to 38 percent.

In countries that, unlike those in Europe, have not been traditional allies of the US, apprehension about America’s pursuit of utter supremacy of its hard power has increased appreciably, with 74 percent of Indonesians, 72 percent of Nigerians and 71 percent of Turks voicing concerns about American intentions in their countries. Significantly, in another poll conducted last month by Pew in 22 countries, including several in the Arab world, respondents in 17, tellingly enough, stated that their problem with the United States was “mostly Bush” rather than “Americans in general.”

President Bush, who knows how to use his elbows, and use them with a vengeance when it comes to projecting US power around the world, has effectively weakened America’s claim to world leadership and put it at odds with the rest of the planet, where it is likely to remain so long as he, along with his neoconservative lieutenants, continues his high-handed unilateralism, that is, working against rather than through the international community, and his parallel inclination to remake the world in America’s image.

The Bush administration, in other words, has taken the concept of America being “on the right side of history,” known as American exceptionalism — founded on the belief that American values have a forward advance that can be resisted but not ultimately defeated — to an extremist limit. And like a mad mathematician’s attempt to take pi to its final decimal point, the notion is absolutely implausible.

You can’t rule over the rest of the world. In Bush’s dyslexicon, however, you can.

Last week, the president of the United States, a man not noted for his artful phrasing of a point, told reporters that “the US will ride herd” on recalcitrant leaders in the Arab world to achieve peace in the Holy Land, conjuring up the image of himself as the American cowboy cracking a whip at some unruly cattle. Say what now, George?

No slang, please, we’re American.

- Arab News Opinion 19 June 2003