America the scapegoat
 An Australian woman who has made New York her home fires back at the
 smug U.S.-bashers in Europe and her native land.

                               - - - - - - - - - - - -
                               By Meera Atkinson

Nov. 30, 2001 | It was five days after the attacks. My husband and I had
fled Manhattan for his brother's place upstate to escape the acrid air
and collect our shattered nerves. I was still having trouble eating and
sleeping, and I'd brought my passport along, just in case World War III
broke out overnight and I decided to slip across the border into Canada
and fly home to Australia.

I was not one of the stoic New Yorkers. In fact, I was not even a New
Yorker. But when I got an e-mail forwarded to me by a friend in London,
I was upset on behalf of all 8 million of them.

The e-mail, written by a Chinese man, was an angry tirade against
America and on behalf of Afghanistan and world peace,
written in incongruently inflammatory language. The words "I don't give
a shit," referring to the terrorist attacks and the suffering
of Americans, stand out in my mind. The writer said that America had
brought the attacks upon itself with its foreign policy, that
Americans were soft and spoiled, that it was high time they got a taste
of their own medicine.

I responded by telling my friend I'd found the piece nasty and
offensive, and requested that she not send any more of the same
ilk. I received a haughty reply stating that she and her friends were
merely engaged in a rigorous international discussion, the
implication being that there was something wrong with me, that I lacked
the intellectual mettle to participate. I didn't know it
then, but it was the first of many skirmishes to come. While flags sold
by the millions and Americans spoke of their newfound
sense of unity, I found myself at first divided and torn between
cultures -- and then, increasingly, alienated from my own.

When I was 20 and living in Sydney, my ardent lifelong love affair with
American culture -- partly born out of my youthful
desire to escape what felt at the time like a suffocating, isolated
island -- crystallized into an intense obsession with New York
City. A few years later Australia grew on me, and my fantasies of living
in New York faded into a nostalgic whimsy. But when I
met and fell in love with a New Yorker, I found myself dreaming of New
York again. While I waited for my fiancé's visa to
come through I watched "Sex and the City" and tried to picture myself in
its scenes.

Moving to New York also meant moving to America. I remember watching the
news the day the USS Cole was bombed, the
feeling of dread it raised in me, the sense of foreboding. I remember
commenting to my father that Americans didn't realize how
hated they were, and that one day it would all blow up. I remember
phoning my then long-distance fiancé and expressing my
fears of life in New York, of violent crime, and of living in a
hemisphere beset by war. I remember the self-possessed calm in
his reassurance that no one would be foolish enough to attack America
itself, and the thin relief with which I tried to believe him.

Looking back now, I realize that our differing views of this potential
arose partly out of geography. Australia and New Zealand
are the most isolated "Western" countries on the planet. It is a
distance that affords a uniquely clear outlook. At the same time
this isolation casts a shadow of parochialism. The combination can
result in a tendency to judge other nations and world events
harshly and simply. It is this tendency with which I have been wrangling
these past weeks.

I arrived in New York in December last year, and we married soon
afterward. I was just feeling that I had finally arrived, and
the beginnings of a bond with the city, when the planes flew into the
towers, the Pentagon, and a sunny Pennsylvania field. The
entire world was in shock, reeling with grief, gripped by fear, and
overwhelmed by the psychic shift heralded by the "new
reality." In the days following the attack I seemed to be in tune with
my Australian friends back home, except that I was
traumatized, having gone through it firsthand, or at least from the
madness of the Empire State Building midtown. I shared my
friends' concern that America might lash out in a bloodlust of
retaliation. I recoiled from the American desire for revenge
confirmed in polls. I agreed that the attacks were a wakeup call that
demanded America reexamine its role in the Middle East,
that it was an opportunity for America to own up to some of its more
undeniable mistakes and wrongdoings and make amends.

But as the weeks passed and we all began to process the ordeal, review
our history, and come to terms with the post-attack
world and the war on terrorism, I became aware of an unsettling division
-- between those who find America a convenient
scapegoat and those who do not.

Polls will tell you that the majority of people in Australia and other
Western, allied nations support America's war on terrorism.
Many of those heartily support the commitment of their own troops. But
what the polls don't tell you is that there is a sizable
and extremely vocal minority who don't, and that beyond even this there
is and has been, for as far back as I can remember, a
palpable anger and hostility toward the U.S. in general. This minority
is not confined to university campuses but stretches across
a broad spectrum of society. Of course there is the "foreign policy is
not a popularity contest" standard by which to measure
this opposition, but if Sept. 11 and the "new reality" have taught us
anything, it is that the hatred much of the world feels toward
the U.S. can no longer be ignored.

That largely impoverished, uneducated and oppressed nations hate America
is more or less understandable. Some of these
nations are ruled by American-backed undemocratic and highly corrupt
governments, and most of them have lived for
generations with the riches of the modern world in view but out of
reach, informed only by a government-controlled media.
Anti-American sentiment in the Middle East is easy to fathom. But why
does this hatred manifest itself in countries like
Australia, Britain and France -- affluent nations that have much more in
common with America than Middle Eastern and Third
World nations?

In my recent dialogue with Australian family and friends, some
predictable reasons have been given. One aunt declared that
Australians' critical view of Americans dates back to World War II, when
American troops were seen as "oversexed,
overpaid, and over there." An Australian expat posting on the Web site
Australians Abroad agreed. "My grandparents hated
the Yanks and would tell stories of the Yanks coming into Brisbane on
R&R and yelling out to the Diggers who were leaving on
another train that they'd 'take care of their women for them,'" he said,
before going on to confirm that some of those American
soldiers did indeed "take care" of the Diggers' women and that a few
were shot for their troubles. No doubt experiences such
as these must have helped formed some national opinion, but there are
just as many stories of camaraderie between Australian
and American soldiers, and just as many Australians who feel a genuine
sense of alliance with America. A cousin was quick to
defend Australia's relationship with the U.S. "We know America would
come to our aid if needed," she said. "It did when the
Japanese invaded and Churchill said, 'Let them take it, we can get it
back later.'" Run-ins during World War II or any other
time don't account for the pervasive and vicious anti-American sentiment
that has peaked in the wake of Sept 11.

The ANZUS Treaty, marking the Australia-United States alliance, was
signed in 1951. The Australian prime minister, John
Howard, was reportedly the first world leader to offer military support
in the war on terrorism. Australian troops followed
America into Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War. Australia has participated
in U.S. intelligence gathering consistently since
World War II. There is therefore a sense that Australia, a relatively
peaceful nation, has been dragged into America's troubles
repeatedly. There is a pronounced anger toward the bind our military
dependence on America presents. But why are some
Australians so unwilling to acknowledge the rewards of this arrangement?
Why are they so insistent on casting themselves as
the hapless weak brother of the big buff bully? It is a clear case of
risk and reward, and though the risks are real, and the
dependence frustrating and unempowering, the rewards are great.

The refusal of the anti-American movement in Australia to address them
is symptomatic of a largely complacent society.
Australia is a wealthy country with a small population that couldn't
possibly defend its coastline if it came under serious attack.
It is a country that pays high taxes but which also enjoys good
services. It has one of the most comprehensive health and
welfare programs in the world. Its citizens live with the certainty that
if they require medical care and cannot afford it, they will
be given it, that if they reach retirement age without sufficient means
of support they can draw a comparatively generous
pension, that if they lose their job they can claim unemployment
benefits until they find another.

All this is possible because it doesn't have to spend massive amounts of
money on national defense. Many who were born and
raised in post-World War II Australia, as I was, have little or no
appreciation of the need for self-defense. In general
Australians feel themselves so far removed, so relatively safe in their
isolation, that they tend to view America as paranoid and
hysterical when it comes to military defense. In my youth I, too, held
this view; I indulged in the idealist, utopian fantasy of a
world with no need for defense, imagining that Australia in particular
need not concern itself with such unsavory preoccupations.
My grandparents knew otherwise. I still hope for a future free of
nuclear threat, for the realized potential of real world peace.
But if and when it comes, it will come about as a result of a powerful
organic human revolution. I am fairly sure it will not come
about by pure fantasy, denial and anti-government jingoism. One thing is
certain; we are not there yet, and it's not only the U.S.
that lags behind in this evolution.

The current antiwar, anti-American sentiment in the West is not confined
to Australia, however. Its voice can be heard right
across Europe. The London friend who had sent the "I don't give a shit"
e-mail went on to explain in further exchanges that the
view of America she shared with many Brits was based on a kaleidoscope
of grievances. "America's intervention in world
affairs is often corrupt, abusive and hypocritical. U.S. foreign policy
is highly destructive and sanctimonious," she declared,
citing an article published in the Guardian in late September by
Arundhati Roy as supporting evidence.

This friend, born and raised in a country settled as an English penal
colony that grew into its own identity by resisting the
class-based, culturally egotistical tendencies of the motherland,
patiently explained why British culture was superior to American
culture, with no visible sense of irony. She actually went so far as to
make the claim that "We [Brits] are not as hysterical or
ignorant as the U.S." It's probably accurate to say that the British,
due to their proximity to Europe and the broader view of
their media (at least their elite media) are more informed about the
rest of the world than Americans, but this hardly precludes
"ignorance" in general. And to claim that the British are less
hysterical than Americans when the memory of the British reaction
to Princess Diana's death is still fresh to us all is bold indeed. The
enormous crowds and mass wailing in London in 1997 was
far more extreme than New Yorkers' reaction to Sept. 11, and it was not
three but roughly 4,000 people killed, not by
accident, but by mass murder.

My London friend opened her litany of complaints with the perception of
a U.S. public deluded by a pure-hype
propaganda-machine media, and went on to cite America's military
presence in Saudi Arabia, its conduct of the Gulf War, its
responsibility for the starvation deaths of 100,000 Iraqi children as a
result of economic sanctions (I've always wondered why
this popular statistic only cites children, as if adults don't starve,
or matter), and all the other well-known sins of America
committed in the name of oil security. She climaxed with the widespread
complaint against U.S. support of Israel, wound down
with accusations of free-trade blackmail and two-faced global emissions
policies, and finished with a description of the U.S.-led
war on terrorism as a typical American aggression bound to add fuel to
the fire.

In other discussions, a Canadian friend living in Australia wrote with
absolute conviction that America's military action in
Afghanistan was motivated solely by a desire for revenge and punishment,
that self-defense "has nothing whatsoever to do with
it." Someone else told me I sounded "like an American" simply because I
questioned the caustic tone of the many recent
anti-American letters to two major Australian newspapers. This same
person attached to their message an article that posed the
theory that America's war in Afghanistan is all about oil in the Caspian
Sea, along with the heavy-handed Arundhati Roy piece,
presumably to enlighten me. One letter in the Sydney Morning Herald's
online edition stood out from the others. It was written
by a Jewish woman who had gone to a peace march in Sydney's Hyde Park
staged by the usually cuddly Friends of the Earth.
She was horrified, she said, to find herself surrounded by a furious
crowd chanting poisonous slogans against the U.S. and
Israel. People calling for peace with voices of hate is perhaps the
ultimate bleak irony of the current antiwar, anti-American
movement.

There have been other long-distance frictions too numerous to mention.
Of course some of these criticisms are valid and
earned, but many are misguided and vulnerable to challenge. Few who cast
these aspersions seem willing to acknowledge that
even the most educated and informed among us rarely get the full
political picture -- and many of those who are the loudest in
their denunciations have far less than that. Yet even when they lack
deep knowledge and information, many anti-Americanists
are all too willing to assume the very worst of America in any given
conflict, often downright whitewashing the other party.

It's not my aim to embark on an in-depth analysis of these charges or
the degree to which they stick or don't stick; suffice to
say that we all know the U.S. is not now, nor has it ever been, perfect.
This is hard to accept; we don't want our superstars, or
our superpowers, to be flawed, human, like the rest of us. What bothers
me most about the anti-American sentiment I've
encountered is not the criticisms themselves, simplistic as they
frequently are, but the dogged superciliousness and smugness
with which they are frequently expressed. There is a lack of real
recognition of America, for better and for worse, inherent in
this attitude. And there is an unsettling ease with which the United
States of America is made the scapegoat for the flawed
policies of the first world, the failings of some nations of the Third
World, a library's worth of historical complexities, and the
guilt of the privileged first-world individual.

It is the fashion, it seems, to hold the U.S. responsible for the
hardships and struggles of the entire planet, some of which were
germinating or already had a long history before America's existence.
For example, many of the problems of the Middle East
and Third World can be more rightly laid at imperial Britain's doorstep.
Granted, America has stepped in where Britain stepped
out, but that doesn't justify holding a New World country solely
responsible for problems born of the Old World.

Anti-Americanism's broadest complaint is also its most powerful argument
-- that the U.S. is too wealthy, too materialistic, too
concerned with its own economic health to the detriment of the world's
poor. The most powerful nation on the planet runs a
laissez-faire economic system that dominates global economics. In
Australia, where capitalism has long been tinged with
socialism (though this hybrid is much diminished now), America's version
of capitalism is viewed as ruthless. But if the problem
is U.S.-led globalization and corporatization, there needs to be some
acknowledgement of the way the rest of the world is
participating. Furious finger-pointing at America ignores the option and
responsibility of nations, communities and individuals to
resist and protest what they find objectionable. The money in a
citizen's hand does more voting than we ever get to do in a
polling booth. Our consumer dollar is, now more than ever, a powerful
political tool.

Too much anti-Americanism rests on bad faith. A psychological sleight of
hand makes it possible for the anti-American
movement across the West to enjoy privileges while avoiding a sense of
responsibility for them. America has blood on its
hands: The rest of the world, apparently, does not.

For some years now I have refused to eat at McDonald's and Burger King
because I object to what I view as the unethical
corporate practices of U.S. fast food chains. Neither do I buy products
tested on animals to protest the global animal
experimentation industry. I know many others who act similarly on their
principles. But I have never heard of a person who
refuses to use oil-dependent modes of transportation in adherence to
their stance against America's oil-driven policies in the
Middle East. I've met the odd rare individual who refuses to own a car
because of their concern for the environment, but never
anyone who boycotts oil across the board -- or even who devotes
significant time to trying to change oil-friendly governmental
policies. Why? Because it's a luxury people simply refuse to give up.
Foregoing a lousy cheeseburger and shopping cruelty-free
doesn't require a great sacrifice -- to live without using oil in the
world as it is today would. That people don't wish to make this
sacrifice is understandable, but that they demonize the U.S. despite
their dependency on oil that may have been procured in
association with U.S. policies is somewhat dishonest and hypocritical.
Righteousness, it turns out, is the drug that soothes the
fears and frustrations of exiled terrorist gurus and Sydney peaceniks
alike.

I am more inclined to respect the voice of anti-Americanism when it
produces more than simplistic critiques and -- at its worst
-- hate speech. In other words, I am more inclined to respect it when it
manifests an active rather than a reactive element.
Unlike classic imperialism achieved by military-led expansion and
domination, cultural and economic imperialism requires willing
colonists. It is possible to resist so-called U.S. imperialism, as the
small community of the Blue Mountains, northwest of
Sydney, did several years ago when it successfully fought a bitter
battle against the opening of a McDonald's in its quaint
historic town. It is possible; it's just that most people would rather
not bother. Victimhood is more appealing than
self-responsibility, and when the villain is a big bumbling superpower
it's an easy play.

Of course, being part of the problem doesn't oblige a person to silence.
People have a right to be angry with the U.S. and its
policies when they feel they're immoral, but they also have a
responsibility to own up to their implicit participation. It's a
democratic right to voice protest, but it's a matter of personal
integrity to do so not from the moral comfort of a high horse, but
while standing on one's own two feet.

Some anti-Americanists already do this, of course. Some, like socialists
and anarcho-syndicalists, go further and campaign for
radically different political and economic systems. But looking around
at the anti-Americanists in my midst I see no home
garage print-runs of "The Die-Hard Communists Weekly" or grassroots
kitchen campaign meetings. I see people plucking the
fruits, and treading the established paths, of capitalism.

And what of the confusions and contradictions of the left wing in the
first world? In the two or three years preceding the attacks
of Sept. 11, I received a string of e-mail petitions from alarmed
feminists and leftists protesting the atrocities committed by the
Taliban and calling for its brutal regime to be brought down. I signed
and passed on every one without ever believing the
petitions would literally achieve that end. It seems that others, though
adult and educated, did believe in the power of these
petitions to cause the Taliban to review in full the practices of its
government. This is the only sense I can make of the
turnaround of many of these same people, who are now on the front lines
of the current antiwar movement. Some who were
aware of conditions in Afghanistan under the Taliban's rule and who
rallied against the world's complacency became, once
America set out to topple the Taliban, its most ardent defenders,
calling for peace at any cost, and casting America as the
brute.

I understand these people are not really defending the Taliban; rather
they are expressing concern for the innocent, already
long-suffering Afghan people, and rightly so. But why the political
backpedaling? Why oppose the forcible removal of the
Taliban when they are clearly far too determined and well established to
be removed by other means? This confusion, born of a
demand that the sufferings of others be rectified coupled with a refusal
to tolerate the realities of what is required to achieve that
change, results in an impossible demand that the U.S. is accused of
failing to meet again and again.

I came across an explicit example of this when reading an article in
which a prominent member of a women's rights organization
publicly retracted a previous statement to the effect that she wished
someone would forcibly take the Taliban out. Sounding
somewhat like a small and frightened child, she explained that she
"didn't really mean it," that it had merely been an expression
of frustration and not of a real and concrete desire for military
intervention. That the U.S. military action in Afghanistan and its
resulting refugee crisis and civilian causalities are painful, even
tragic, goes without saying. But to believe in a world where
dangerous people and tyrannical governments miraculously disappear seems
infantile.

When I asked my French neighbor about the anti-American sentiment in
France, she said there is a profound sense of "they had
it coming" among the French left. When I asked her what the roots of
French anti-American sentiment were she said simply,
"Envy, jealousy. We think of Americans as arrogant, vain, self-centered.
It is what France was two centuries ago: the center of
the world." While I doubt this is all that fuels the anti-American
sentiment there and across the West, there is likely some plain
old jealousy in the mix. It's not an envy as tortured and confused at
that of the Middle East, because we in the West are neither
as uniformly religious or as economically deprived as the peoples of
those nations. But it is tempting, it seems, to resent those
more powerful and dominant, and to rally a reactive cause in response.

Some of this resentment boils down to that most basic of human emotions
-- hurt feelings. Beyond the "Tall Poppy Syndrome"
-- the famous Australian pastime of cutting gloating achievement,
blatant success, and perceived arrogance down to size --
Australians often feel overlooked by America and Americans. I remember
feeling angry that I didn't see Australia, a country
with a fascinating history and political life, covered at all in the
American media for months following my arrival. Even now I'm
lucky to catch a passing reference or a feature in a travel section. And
I've felt personally slighted more than once socially,
when someone's eyes glazed over upon hearing the word Australia.
Typically they'd vaguely mention Paul Hogan or kangaroos
before losing interest completely. This hurt is, I think, a factor in
the anti-American feelings of many peoples, especially
Australians who get little attention on the world stage. It's a
legitimate complaint, but it scarcely justifies the virulent
condemnations that have emerged after Sept. 11.

Another comment my French neighbor made, recounting how a friend of hers
in France had exclaimed bitterly on the phone,
"They have six cases of anthrax and it's the end of the world. What
about Rwanda?" illustrates another confusion of the left in
relation to the U.S. -- the damned if you do, damned if you don't
principle. America is criticized for not being a benevolent
superpower when it doesn't intervene, and criticized for being the world
police when it does. It is cast as an abusive cop when
it steps into conflicts such as Kosovo, or accused of criminal
negligence when it fails to act, as it did with the genocide in
Rwanda. The U.S. itself suffers a certain amount of confusion in its
foreign policy which gives rise to mixed messages, but
whichever way it goes on any distant conflict the left seems insistent
on meeting the U.S. with skepticism or conspiracy theories
of ulterior motives.

Certain factions of the American left are no less virulent. A country,
particularly a powerful one, needs a mindful and vocal
conscience, and when it's doing its job, as it did during the Vietnam
War, it's a vital watchdog. But Sept. 11 seems to have
reduced even some Americans to sloppy accusations and irrational
outbursts.

A prime example of this "America is the devil" silliness appeared in the
Nov. 20 Village Voice. James Ridgeway's "Mondo
Washington" columns titled "The Ugly American: Bully Spends Billions
Blasting Nation of Refugees," "The Lost Colony:
Afghanistan's Huddled Masses" and "Brown Out: U.S. Drops Bigger Bombs on
Darker People," were the most stunning
displays of frenzied knee-jerking in the name of journalism I've
witnessed in a long time. In one short page he managed to hold
the U.S. government responsible for the deaths of 7 million Afghan
refugees (most of whom are not even dead), to refer to
Afghanistan as an American "colony," and to suggest that the use of the
dreadful "daisy cutter" in the bombing campaign was
inspired by a racist impulse to "get rid of these nasty tan bugs."

As Christopher Hitchens pointed out in the December Atlantic Monthly,
some in the American left and other "progressives"
"have grossly failed to live up to their responsibility to think;
rather, they are merely reacting, substituting tired slogans for
thought." Or in Ridgeway's case, hysteria for thought. There's a certain
laziness involved. It's not necessary to challenge oneself
and grapple with impossible problems, it's not necessary to read
extensively across a wide range of views (not only those that
confirm one's most comfortable and staid thinking and beliefs), or to
educate oneself on the intricacies of history and geopolitics
in order to be certain which governments should be held accountable for
what sufferings, when one can, without going to all this
trouble, satisfy one's need to assign blame and take the high moral
ground by making the U.S. accountable for everything, even
deaths that haven't happened.

After many trans-Pacific and Atlantic conversations I've come to see the
escalating anti-Americanism as the product of, to
varying degrees, a tendency toward black and white thinking, a heartfelt
concern for the suffering of disadvantaged peoples,
and the denial of our own most rapacious capitalist selves -- as
projected upon and epitomized by the U.S. The stridency of
this habit of thought is laced with wishful thinking and is driven by a
lack of equanimity fostered by the new reach of global
terrorism. People are afraid. They want to believe that if only America
had not responded militarily, if only it had seen the error
of its ways and had met the terrorist demands by pulling out of the
Middle East, everything would be all right. They would not
had have to send their troops, they would not have to fear future
attacks on their own soil, they could go to sleep in the
knowledge that World War III is an imaginary nightmare rather than a
present day potential.

It's an understandable conclusion, one I also entertained in the awful
days following the attacks. The problem with it is that it
underestimates both America and the terrorists who have declared war on
it, if in totally different ways. I've been struck by the
apparent sense of confidence some anti-American westerners have in the
terrorists. I've even stumbled across a few apologists.
They seem to hold the view that the terrorists are somehow reasonable in
their endeavor, that they would surely end the terror if
they got their way. One Australian, again posting on the "Australians
Abroad" Web site, stated, "Remember even the fanatics of
9 Sept [sic] didn't do this to maximize kill ratio ... hitting a sports
stadium with gas would have taken out thousands more."
Apart from the fact that "hitting a sports stadium with gas" is not as
easily achieved as this poster imagines, it's a preposterous
notion that the perpetrators of this attack were in any way concerned
with minimizing civilian casualties. The poster went on to
argue his point by claiming that the terrorists had chosen "light flight
loadings" guided by the same noble impulses. Apparently
the idea that they'd chosen lightly booked flights because it meant less
chance of passenger resistance and therefore a greater
chance of success was not familiar to this well-meaning young man. But
this fantasy of "almost" freedom fighters with an
"almost" just cause is as prevalent as it is problematic.

What we know about bin Laden and al-Qaida suggests a very different
potential. The theory that bin Laden's true focus lies in
leading a fundamentalist Islamic insurgency right across the Muslim
world seems to have some weight. If that is his mission
statement, America's abstention from military action and wholesale
backing out of the Middle East might well have had two
immediate consequences: an oil crisis and a series of successful
insurgencies. The world economy would have become unstable,
and a significant portion of the world would soon be under the rule of
fiercely repressive Taliban-style governments -- but this
time with nuclear capabilities. Who knows if they'd stop there? Islam
has a proud history of expansionism. I suspect that then
the anti-Americanists -- Australians, English, Europeans, feminists, and
peaceniks alike -- would have a sudden change of
heart.

I realize this is a dark and somewhat alarmist scenario. We have no way
of knowing if it could have happened because
America did, predictably, attack. And, of course, as the antiwar
movement would be quick to point out, the U.S.-led action in
Afghanistan carries its own risk of inciting insurgencies. However, they
could not proceed as quickly and as smoothly as they
might have had the U.S. simply withdrawn from the whole region at bin
Laden's demand. I'm not suggesting that a U.S.
withdrawal from Saudi Arabia is impossible or undesirable, only that
there are problems with the assumption that America's
"understanding" and tolerance of the terrorist cause as stated could or
would have spared further conflict and escalation.

While many of my friends overseas promote stereotypes of America and
find affirmation from each other in doing so --
Americans are blinded by their own inflated self-image, they fall prey
to their government propaganda mindlessly with no
self-examination, they revel in their ignorance of other parts of the
world, etc. -- I see a different America. I see a grieving,
vulnerable America shocked out of its self-absorption, an America that
is indeed questioning, debating, and attempting to
understand the root causes of its predicament, seeking to educate itself
about Islam and Muslim cultures, seeking to defend
itself against further attacks. I see an America that has welcomed more
people from more countries around the globe than any
other country in the history of mankind. I see an America whose embrace
of democracy and vision of freedom, however less
than perfectly realized, beats in every American heart. I see an America
that deserves compassion in response to its
misfortunes, and acknowledgement of its virtues and better strivings,
however often they may fail or produce unforeseen
consequences. And I see a world that would be less without it.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Meera Atkinson is an Australian writer
living in New York.