Niall Ferguson: Why our enemies -- and friends -- hate us

[babylonsister]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ferguson26feb26,0,5329250.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

Why our enemies -- and friends -- hate us

Provoking dislike throughout the world is part of being an empire.
February 26, 2007

BEING HATED IS NO FUN. And few people hate being hated more than Americans. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've been asked, "Why do they hate us?" — and another for each of the different answers I've heard. It's because of our foreign policy. It's because of their extremism. It's because of our arrogance. It's because of their inferiority complex. Americans really hate not knowing why they're hated.

The best explanation is the simplest. Being hated is what happens to dominant empires. George Orwell knew the feeling. As a young man he served as an assistant police superintendent in British-run Burma, an experience he memorably described in his essay, "Shooting an Elephant." Called upon to kill a pachyderm that had run amok, Orwell was suddenly aware "of the watchful yellow faces behind" him: "The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh."

Eric Blair — as Orwell was known then — could scarcely have been better prepared for his role as a colonial official. Born in Bengal, the son of a colonial civil servant, he had been educated at Eton, where boys learn not to worry about being hated. Yet even he found the resentment of the natives hard to bear: "In the end the sneering … faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves…. was perplexing and upsetting."

That's a feeling American soldiers in Baghdad must know pretty well.

But who hates Americans the most? You might assume that it's people in countries that the United States has recently attacked or threatened to attack. Americans themselves are clear about who their principal enemies are. Asked by Gallup to name the "greatest enemy" of the U.S. today, 26% of those recently polled named Iran, 21% named Iraq and 18% named North Korea.

Are those feelings reciprocated? Up to a point. The Gallup Center for Muslim Studies' latest poll found 52% of Iranians view the U.S. unfavorably. But that is down from 63% in 2001. And it's significantly lower than the antipathy felt in Jordan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Two-thirds of Jordanians and Pakistanis have a negative view of the U.S., as do a staggering 79% of Saudis.

These figures suggest a paradox in the Muslim world. It's not the United States' enemies that hate it most. It's people in countries that are supposed to be friendly, if not allies.

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[wake.up.america]

1. The question should have been - do you favor current policies of the US Administration?

This is a means of disavowing any responsibility by the government in power.


"The French have never liked us, so why should they now?"

"They are jealous of our freedom."

And the list goes on.