President Obama kicked off his inaugural speech before the United Nations General Assembly last week by addressing the wave of anti-Americanism engulfing the world.

“I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust,” he told his counterparts.

Part of this was due to misperceptions and misinformation about my country. Part of this was due to opposition to specific policies, and a belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally …. This has fed an almost reflexive anti-Americanism ….

This was not Mr. Obama’s first attempt at stemming the rise of anti-Americanism. If the past nine months have revealed anything, it’s that one of Mr. Obama’s top foreign-policy objectives is to heal America’s global reputation—even if it means marginalizing national interest, ditching friends and courting enemies. Although America’s reputation may have somewhat improved in some parts of the world, the nations targeted by the Obama swoon campaign remain, for the most part, unmoved.

Polls show that despite the apologetic speeches, the grandiose and far-reaching concessions, the promises of talks without preconditions, Islamic countries distrust the United States about as much as they did when George W. Bush was president. Portrayed by many as a gun-toting “cowboy,” Mr. Bush’s perceived unilateral, uncompromising foreign policy supposedly inflamed tensions within the Arab world and severely injured America’s global reputation. Only if Bush was replaced with a president willing to take a softer, more multilateral tack on foreign affairs, the American electorate was told, would the rest of the world, and especially Arab states, start appreciating America again.

How wrong they were.

Although some early polls indicated that the election of Mr. Obama was helping restore America’s reputation, more recent polls show that this “hagiographic storyline,” as Joseph Loconte put it in the American recently, “is evaporating like a morning mist.”

Loconte was referring to this recent Pew survey, taken in the wake of Mr. Obama’s address to the Muslim world in June. While it revealed improving views of America in a handful of Muslim states, like Indonesia (where Obama’s family ties are helping him out), it showed that “for the most part, opinions of the U.S. among Muslims in the Middle East remain largely unfavorable …” (emphasis mine throughout).

This survey, observed Loconte,

suggests that most Islamic countries distrust the United States under the leadership of President Obama about as much as they did under President George W. Bush. Yes, majorities of the Muslim populations interviewed still believe that America plays a mostly destructive role in the world. Most view the United States as “an enemy” and “a military threat” to their own country. Most disapprove of the American-led effort to combat terrorism. Large numbers, in fact, voice strong support for terrorism and Osama bin Laden. … In other words, anti-Americanism is alive and well in the age of Obama.

Remember, this poll was taken roughly six months after the Obama administration began courting the Muslim world with a steady stream of apologies, concessions and promises.

And where has it gotten us? Consider Pakistan, for example. In recent years America has invested literally tens of millions of dollars, countless political and military man-hours, and boatloads of aid and supplies in that country. For what? Loconte continued:

[O]nly about 16 percent of respondents [in Pakistan] express a positive view of the United States—a drop of 3 percentage points from when Bush was president. … [M]ost Pakistanis (64 percent) view the United States as an enemy. The most alarming finding, in view of Pakistan’s nuclear capability, is that more people express positive views of Osama bin Laden than they do of Obama.

Chew on that. “Nearly one in five respondents (18 percent) trust bin Laden to ‘do the right thing’ in world affairs, compared to 13 percent for Obama.“ This grim reality is echoed by a recent World Public Opinion survey, which revealed that many people in Muslim-majority states believe the U.S. is playing a largely negative role in the world. According to the findings: Sixty percent of Egyptians express little or no confidence in Barack Obama to do the right thing regarding world affairs. A majority of Iraqis (57 percent) do not express confidence in Barack Obama to do the right thing regarding world affairs. A majority of Palestinians (67 percent) say they have little or no confidence in Barack Obama to do the right thing in world affairs. Turks are divided on whether they have confidence in Obama to do the right thing in world affairs: 45 percent say they have confidence, while 55 percent say they do not.

These results are important because they belie the pervasive liberal assumptions about radical Islam. The prevailing notion in the Obama administration and among liberals is that America’s past actions are the root cause of anti-Americanism. With this falsehood as their premise, they believe the solution to extinguishing anti-Americanism and restoring global confidence in the U.S. is to establish a foreign policy devoid of self-interest and dominated by appeasement, compromise and self-abasement.

This is precisely what Mr. Obama has done. He’s apologized profusely, in words and actions, to the Muslim world; he’s essentially subjugated American foreign policy to the UN; he’s distanced himself from traditional friends and allies, and he’s doing his best to kill off American intelligence and security policies and programs that might foster the perception of America as a unilateral tyrant.

To what gain? The unrelenting wave of anti-Americanism still engulfing the Muslim world exposes his foreign policy—and, more importantly, its naive, liberal underpinnings—as a failure.

“It is my deeply held belief,” stated Mr. Obama during his UN address last week, “that in the year 2009—more than at any point in human history—the interests of nations and peoples are shared.” The Obama administration looks at the world as if it’s one big happy family. America’s president believes nations share the same interests, have the same motivations, dream the same dreams.

The reality is, as Stephen Flurry wrote last week, “the interests of nations and peoples have never been so deeply divided.” Study the history of the human race. Human existence is a story of clashing interests and bloody conflicts. It’s saturated with lies, deception, greed, vanity and lust for power. It’s replete with wars, governmental breakdown, clashing empires, social disorder and economic calamities. Anyone who believes “more than at any point in human history, the interests of nations and peoples are shared,” simply doesn’t know history.

He also doesn’t understand human nature. The Prophet Jeremiah defined human nature well when he wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Jeremiah understood that the human heart is desperately sly, insidious, sick and incurable. Human beings, as the Bible reveals, are motivated solely by self-interest and self-preservation. The only common element between every human on Earth is this wicked, deceitful heart.

Ultimately, human nature is responsible for anti-Americanism. At its core, anti-Americanism is a result of the opposing interests and views between the wicked, self-interested hearts of Muslims and the wicked, self-interested hearts of Americans. The way to solve anti-Americanism is not to appease it, or to shower the Islamic world with concessions.

Only God can heal the human heart. And He will. To learn how, request The Incredible Human Potential.