A less gullible public

Two years after the devastating attacks against symbols of American might on 11 September 2001 the Bush administration is exhibiting precisely those strategies in dealing with the Arab world that resulted in the emergence of figures such as Bin Laden.

The Bush administration was hell-bent on going to war with Iraq: it has become increasingly obvious that accusations regarding Iraq's WMD were never anything other than an excuse. And now Washington is threatening -- either implicitly or explicitly -- other countries in the region.

The US repeatedly defends Israel's gross human rights violations and lends tacit support to the atrocities committed against a defenceless Palestinian population. It repeatedly fails to exploit the leverage over Israel it enjoys courtesy of the enormous financial support that makes Israel's atrocities possible in the first place. And Washington just vetoed the UN resolution urging Israel not to harm or expel the democratically-elected Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. How, one wonders, do those who sit behind desks in Washington think such actions go down here?

The imbroglio in Iraq is even more embarrassing for the Americans. Costs and casualties are mounting: the so-called democratic "domino effect" has failed to materialise. For all the clout Washington wields, the US is beginning to turn to the UN for help in Iraq. That in itself is a welcome climbdown, for the world if not for Washington. But the US needs to do a lot more to win the hearts and minds of people across the globe.

Facilitating democratisation in the Middle East: it no longer washes, if indeed it ever did, as an excuse for war. Public opinion across the region is far more clued-up than that. Indeed, people around the world are far less gullible than Washington's pundits think. It is time America starts to what even its allies in Europe and the Arab world are telling it.