The United States is viewed as a powerful country, economically stable, military strong, and what Timothy Garton Ash in “Fortress America” calls “soft” (Ackley page 484) - willingness of immigrants to go to the United States and willingness for their citizens to stay in the country - , or at least this image is what was portrayed to the world before the “war on terrorism” began, and which has changed a lot ever since, even though some people believe otherwise.
Before the war on terrorism, the United States was a country that people looked forward to go to, people from different countries were attracted to the fact that the United States provided freedom to major issues such as religious, political and economic conditions. In the United States people could exercise their own religion far away from their prosecutors, believe and support the political party of their choice, have the opportunity to reach the desired economic wealth in a much faster pace. Philip Larkin in “Fortress America” by Timothy Garton Ash states, “God bless America,” “so large, so friendly and so rich” (Ackley page 484) as examples of how good of an image the country once had; citizens of the United States were proud to be part of the history and felt secure since “following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States has been acting as the world's only superpower” (New World Encyclopedia).
However, after the war on terrorism started, the global opinion of United States has sharply deteriorated. Their closest allies do not fully support them in war and some even rejected any further support to this foreign policy, Thomas Crampton from the “International Herald Tribune” describes a situation when “Turkey's close military alliance with the United States has been badly strained by its refusal to allow its territory to be used as a staging ground for an invasion of northern Iraq.” (Crampton) In 2003, Australia was the only other country to send troops to fight in Iraq with England...