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By Will Kern, Editor-in-Chief

May 24, 2005

With the 20th century fantasy of human progress in ruins, it is time to ask ourselves what went wrong. What would you have said if you knew in 1999 where we would find ourselves today. How many of us would have believed it?

As we stand face to face with an outright global conflict between Islam and the West, with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in tatters, and with more and more talk of space-based weaponry, we need to create a new paradigm, a new model for global affairs.

Why, after thousands of years of human progress and what we like to refer to as civilization, does the world remain an armed camp, with nations and groups ready to kill or be killed?

Why is the United States so disliked in some quarters? Why don’t people abroad understand that Americans by and large want the world to share our prosperity, our freedom, our blessings? The question is almost a cliché at this point. But we must discover why.

Few could credibly attempt to answer these questions, and that is the chief problem that needs to be addressed. At a time when technology is making the world smaller by the day – and making it easier for small groups to inflict great harm – we need to understand what motivates our fellow man. And that goes double for those of us that are citizens of the world’s only remaining superpower.

That is why my British partner Robin Koerner and myself have created WatchingAmerica.com.

Society as we know it is at a breaking point, and in order to avert what can only be described as a catastrophe of misunderstanding, Americans need to know what motivates our friends and our adversaries.

And it is not only policymakers that need such knowledge. Anyone that has traveled abroad grasps the importance of knowing how others view our nation and its policies, and of being able to intelligently interact with people on the subject.

WatchingAmerica uses the latest advances in language-translation technology and professional news editing to give the English-speaking world a daily snapshot of how the rest of the world feels about America. It is a non-partisan effort to mirror global opinion -- good, bad or indifferent -- in regard to the United States.

WatchingAmerica also provides a wide range of multi-media content to put the news into better context and allows visitors to delve more deeply into the conflicting perceptions that confront our nation. From Europe to Asia, to Africa and the Middle East, come and examine the kaleidoscope of global opinion, all in an easy-to-read format.

Let us head off greater misunderstanding – with understanding.

Let us break the language barrier.

William Kern
Editor-in-Chief
WatchingAmerica.com