Anti-Americanism defined

21 May 2006

President Bush now describes the global campaign against terrorism as “the calling of our generation". ("Bush Asserts That Victory in Iraq Is Still ‘Achievable’", Dec 21).

If the United States had not created so many terrorists - for example by propping up the corrupt Saudi Arabian monarchy, invading Iraq, torturing Muslims in secret prisons, and siding for so long with Israel against the Palestinians - terrorism would still be the occasional, containable event, as it was in the 1970s and 1980s.

Similarly, the rhetorical war with certain Latin American countries is significantly a product of past US attempts - often murderous - to undermine governments in that region, some of which were democracies.

Most of we supposed anti-Americans actually love American culture and American people. But now that it has been reduced to Orwell's eternal war against self-created enemies, sane people are hard put to feel the same about American foreign policy.