During my lifetime, America has been constantly waging war against much of humanity: impoverished people mostly, in stricken places. Moreover, far from being the main perpetrators of terrorism, Islamic peoples have been its victims—more often than not of an American fundamentalism and its proxies.
It is this record of unabashed national egotism and arrogance that drives anti-Americanism among swaths of the world's population, for whom there is little democracy in the current distribution of global wealth and power. If it turns out that Tuesday's attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden's supporters, the sense that the Americans are once again reaping a dragons' teeth harvest they themselves sowed will be overwhelming.
It is men who perpetrated this violence and men who organise the response. The power structure is exposed at such times, as the token women slide into the background, leaving war to men. Condoleezza Rice seems to be the one exception. Virtually the only female faces in the media at the moment are the victims; women are cast as passive.
A bully with a bloody nose is still a bully.
[Ed.: In contrast, and for the record, four-fifths of the British public voiced support for a war against global terrorism.]
