Why the USA is so hated

George W Bush has been telling the American people and the rest of the world that terrorism against the US is based on envy and irrational hatred.

Other officials, however, have questioned the party line for years.

By William Blum Since the fateful day of 11 September 2001, US airports have enlisted more than 50,000 'screeners' - low-paid individuals who indulge themselves in their new-found power by making passengers take their shoes off, drop their trousers, undergo foot-to-shoulder pat-downs and intrusive questioning, and submit their luggage to minute, public examination.

'No-fly' lists are maintained and if your name is on them, you're unlikely to get on any planes.

Everyone concerned with airline security insists that they have no idea how people wind up on these lists, and no idea how to remove names from them.

The once-beautiful city of Washington, DC, where I live, now often feels like one big security checkpoint.

If government buildings are not closed to the public, getting into them is often so cumbersome that it doesn't seem worth the effort.

I have stopped going to the Library of Congress, a practically indispensable resource for a writer like myself, because the rules and regulations are simply stifling.

The National Archives is considerably worse.

Massive concrete barriers, ugly wooden fences and other improvised security structures are commonplace in the city, as are X-ray machines, metal detectors and ID checks.

Worse still, the so-called war on terrorism is bleeding the national wealth.

Every state and city is making prodigious and painful cuts in employees, education, healthcare and a whole range of other social services.

It seems that 'the richest country in the world' cannot afford to provide its citizens with even the basics.

Yet the attitude of most Americans toward all this is essentially: 'There's no choice, is there? We have to fight terrorism.' Little thought is given to the idea that there is indeed a choice; we could take away the terrorists' motivation for attacking the US.

'Terrorists' motivation? You mean those sick, twisted bastards have a reason for what they do?' The notion that terrorism against the US can only be explained by envy and irrational hatred, and not by what the US does in and to the world postulates a US that is always the aggrieved innocent in a treacherous world.

Washington goes benignly about its business, only to be 'provoked' into taking extreme measures to defend its people, its freedom and its democracy.

Thus it is that for two years, in one wording or another, George W Bush has repeatedly insisted: 'Those people hate the US.

They hate all that it stands for.

They hate our democracy, our freedom, our wealth, our secular government.' And thus it was that Afghanistan and Iraq were bombed, invaded and occupied with seemingly little concern that such actions could well create many new anti-US terrorists.

Since the first strike on Afghanistan there have been literally scores of terrorist attacks against US institutions in the Middle East, south Asia and the Pacific.

Dubya may or may not believe what he tells the world about the motivations behind anti-US terrorism, but other officials have questioned the party line for years.

A 1997 Department of Defence study concluded: 'Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the US.' Back in 1989 former president Jimmy Carter told The New York Times: 'You only have to go to Lebanon, to Syria or to Jordan to witness first-hand the intense hatred among many people for the US because we bombed and shelled and unmercifully killed totally innocent villagers - women and children and farmers and housewives - in those villages around Beirut.As a result of that.we became kind of a Satan.

That is what precipitated the taking of our hostages, and that is what has precipitated some of the terrorist attacks.' Even Colin Powell, writing of this same Lebanon debacle, forgoes clich‚s about terrorists not believing in democracy.

'The USS New Jersey started hurling 16-inch shells into the mountains above Beirut, in World War II style, as if we were softening up the beaches on some Pacific atoll prior to an invasion,' wrote Powell in his memoirs.

'What we tend to overlook in such situations is that other people will react much as we would.' And as for Dubya? 'How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for the US? I'll tell you how I respond.

I'm amazed that there's such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us.

I am like most Americans; I just can't believe it because I know how good we are.' _TWNF