PARIS — Shaken by the Iraq war and the rise of anti-American sentiment around the world, Americans are turning inward, a Pew survey of US opinion leaders and the general public suggests.

The survey, conducted this autumn and released yesterday, found a revival of isolationist feelings among the public similar to the sentiment that followed the Vietnam War in the 1970s and the end of the Cold War in the 1990s.

At the same time, the survey showed, Americans are feeling less unilateralist than in the past, in what appeared to indicate a desire for a more modest foreign policy.

Forty-two percent of Americans think the United States should ”mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own,” according to the survey, which was conducted by the Pew Research Center in association with the Council on Foreign Relations.

That is an increase of 40 percent since a poll taken in December 2002, before the US-led invasion of Iraq; at that time only 30 percent of Americans said the country should mind its own business internationally.
boston.com

American ‘inwardness’, i.e. narcissism, is nothing new. The self-seeking behavior of Americans made global corporate imperialist takeover possible. When it serves us, we are ‘the world’s only superpower.’ When American aggression is not being nicely received, we can just retreat into our various amusements and distractions. As privileged folks, we have an amazingly low tolerance for unpleasantness of any kind. Americans have never bothered much to concern themselves about how people live in the rest of the world. The appalling naivete of American response to 9-11 is a case in point. It’s all about us. Never forget that.

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