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MEDFORD, Mass. — At the recent meeting of the United Nations, everyone was expecting President Ahmadinejad of Iran to dominate the press and be the loudest critic of the U.S. in front of the General Assembly. However, the person to make the biggest splash last week was not the president of Iran but rather President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

What exactly did Chávez say? Referring to President Bush’s earlier appearance, Chávez said at the podium, “The devil came here yesterday, right here. It smells of sulfur still today, this table I am now standing in front of.”

The comment prompted horrified gasps and giggles all around the General Assembly. The sad part is that there were quite a few half-hidden smiles and genuine chuckles.

One can make the argument that these reactions are a result of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. There is no question that since Sept. 11, the U.S. has taken an understandably more aggressive stance, but the results have been upsetting a lot of countries.

There were probably better ways of going about it, like making sure you were not defending the invasion of a country based on false information and isolating all of your allies – but no one can change that now.

One has to look past Chávez’s words to see a new threat forming from anti-Americanism, and this time, it is not in the form of new terrorists.

Two weeks ago in Havana, a group of 118 countries met (including Venezuela, Iran, North Korea and Syria) to discuss Iran’s rights in the nuclear debate and the overbearing United States. Now there is the threat of these countries working more closely together to make life tough for the United States. Not only will this make reversing anti-American sentiments around the world more difficult, but it will make achieving any of our goals much harder.

Bush contributed to the beginning of this war of insults. He didn’t think ahead when using ultimatums (“with us or against us”) and calling countries part of an “axis of evil.” Now America is going to have a hard time maintaining its influence around the world with all these countries continually pecking away at its reputation.

America’s problems seem to be piling up and our influence slowly slipping away. One might think that would lead to a re-thinking of our foreign policy; however, our current administration is nothing but single-mindedly stubborn, refusing to change anything no matter what evidence appears to show that its current ways are not working.

With the chuckles about our president being the devil as proof, feelings abroad about the United States will not be warming up any time soon.

Granshaw is a columnist for The Tufts Daily at Tufts University.