WHY DO THEY HATE US?

After the grief, and perhaps even before anger or hatred, the sentiment most widely expressed by the American people in the aftermath of the events of 11th September was incomprehension.
    "Why do they hate us?"
    The anchorwoman of a well-known American TV news station, walking through the streets of New York, found herself constantly stopped by bewildered citizens, asking her the same question, seeking some kind of reassurance or sense among the senseless chaos all around them.
    "Why do they hate us?"
    Offering an answer, another American reporter suggested "We're a country of haves, and mostly, in the Islamic world, they're have-nots..." It was perhaps part of the answer, a small but significant part; but it was far from the whole answer.

    Bin Laden, a have-not? Hardly. Even by American standards, Bin Laden is a have, a multi-millionnaire. Nor were the hijackers have-nots; they were well educated young men, and some at least were from middle-class families in the Arab world where, perhaps significantly, the contrast in lifestyles between the haves and the have-nots is among the greatest in the world.     Yet the hijackers had a boundless hatred of America.

    But why? Why do so many people throughout the world hate a country which - in spite of notable failings - is still one of the world's freest and most democratic nations, as well as the richest?
    The contrast between conspicuous American prosperity and the crushing poverty of many countries is just one reason; there are many more.

    Perhaps the most fundamental cause of anti-American sentiment lies in America's failure to understand the rest of the world.
    Ever since independence, the United States of America has stood apart from the rest of the world. "Isolationism" has been a powerful force in America since 1823, when President Monroe first established the "Monroe Doctrine", which has influenced American policy ever since. The United States did not enter the First World War until 1917, following the sinking of the Lusitania and several American ships by German U-boats; and it took Pearl Harbor in 1941 - to which the destruction of the World Trade Center has been compared - to bring the United States into the Second World War.
    For the last half century, things have been different. Caught up in the Cold War, the USA found herself the main player in a worldwide geo-political struggle from which she could not withdraw; but caught between the contradictory forces of isolationism and anti-Communism, she operated a foreign policy that in many ways failed.
    Most significantly, in their single-minded determination to oppose the spread of Communism, US governments handed out generous amounts of money and military aid to almost any "democratic" (i.e. anti-communist) regimes or opposition groups. Unfortunately, these included many corrupt and oppressive regimes in different parts of the world, notably in Latin America. That was one of the earliest and broadest causes of anti-Americanism worldwide.

    In Islamic countries, anti-Americanism is a more recent phenomenon, largely due to US support for Israel. Throughout the Islamic world, millions of people (though not all people) hold the United States indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Palestinians, and for the hopeless conditions in which hundreds of thousands more now live in refugee camps and in the Gaza strip. Others hate the USA (and the West in general) for its role in the Gulf War. In short, there are few people in the Islamic world, other than Kuwaitis, rich Saudis and businessmen from the Emirates, who have any reasons to love the USA.
    Even then, prosperity and education do not necessarily mean that people assume American ideals, wherever they may be in the world. There are prosperous, educated people, who have entirely different reasons to dislike - if not hate - the USA; for instance those who object to the relentless international expansion of powerful American companies, forcing the homogeneity of globalization and American values, on people and countries who do not want them. Although globalization is probably inevitable, it need not perhaps be synonymous with creeping americanization of the whole planet.
    But apart from all this, people hate the USA because the USA has failed to understand and take account of the fundamental (and sometimes fundamentalist) reasons and motivations that determine collective thought in other parts of the world. Americans have too often tried to understand other people solely in American terms, according to American logic and American values. Most of the world's people, however, do not think and feel in terms of American logic.

    In America itself, there is a deep popular belief that the USA is the best country in the world, with the best systems and the best lifestyles; and that because the USA is the best place in the world, everyone else in the world with any sense should look up to the USA, and see American society, American ideals, as role models to respect and follow.
    It is a sentiment echoed by all kinds of people in the USA, even by people in positions of authority; but it is too naïve.Other people hold other values, other ideals.
    In a sense, the USA as a nation - despite being the world's only superpower - suffered from a critical degree of naïvety in world affairs - until September 11th 2001.
    Until that day, it had been over two hundred years since a hostile act of international war had occurred on the territory of the continental United States. Americans had taken part in wars on other continents, in the deserts of Kuwait or the jungles of Vietnam; cities in Europe and Japan had been flattened by military bombardment. Yet although dead American GI's had returned in body-bags from different theaters of war, even from terrorist attacks, throughout this period the cities of the USA had indeed been spared, in their isolation, from the horrors of bombardment.
    In many ways, the people of the USA lived for two centuries in isolation from the rest of the world. Perhaps it was therefore no wonder that America, as a nation, failed to understand the reality of the anti-American hatred that was growing in parts of the world.

    That hatred cannot be quelled by military force. It can only be conquered by attacking the causes of the problem. The Atlantic and Pacific oceans are no longer the massive barriers that they were in Monroe's age, and in today's "global village", the United States can no longer disregard the feelings, the hatred and the jealousies of other less fortunate nations.
    On 11th September, the extent of the hatred that some people have for the USA came home with ugly force; and suddenly Americans have begun to question the reasons for this hatred. A group of terrorists have changed the direction of world politics - but not necessarily in the direction that they intended.

Copyright Linguapress.com  2001

aftermath: period following a catastrophe - anchorwoman: presenter of a program - anger: fact of being angry - assume: acquire, take up - bewildered: uncomprehending, perplexed - body bag: sack used to transport dead bodies - boundless: unlimited - broad: wide - by American standards: compared to American norms - came home: became apparent - conspicuous: ostentatious, very visible - contradictory: opposing - creeping: slow but regular - crushing: insupportable, very heavy - disregard: take no account of - ever since: since that time - failing: opposite of success - failure to understand: the fact that America has not understood - foreign: international - hand out: give - hatred: hate, hating - haves: people who have possessions, rich people - homogeneity: conformity - look up to: admire and respect - no wonder that: not surprising that - object to: complain about - quell: stop, restrict - relentless: ceaseless, unstoppable - role models: models to be followed - seek, sought sought: look for - single minded: motivated by one single idea - sinking: sending a ship to the bottom of the sea - solely: only - spared: untouched - spread: expansion - take account of: consider - withdraw: exit, escape, go away.

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