Paul J. Balles considers why world repugnance at US policies now extends to ordinary Americans. He asks his fellow Americans whether they deserve this hatred and concludes: "If, instead of seeking to understand the causes and possible cures for the bloody actions we've engendered, we carry on prompting the actions, we deserve whatever the outcome may be."

Outside of America, the rest of the world hates you and me. Yes, hates! And yes, you! Hates America; and hates Americans!

In 35 years of living in the Middle East and travelling around the world, I have never before felt the acrimony that I've seen and heard and felt during the past year.

At times, when Israel was being particularly brutal toward Palestinians and the US administration supported the brutalities, I experienced malevolence toward our government. Never did that repugnance extend to ordinary Americans like myself.

Most of the world has been only too ready to forgive American injustices because they knew Americans who despised those injustices as much as they did. They also held idealized images of America that seemed to offer freedom and opportunity that they felt deprived of in their own worlds of poverty, corruption and oppression.

Now, all that has gone by the wayside. Doors have slammed shut on any idealized vision of living in America where hatred of "Give me your poor, tired and huddled masses" of Statue of Liberty fame has been replaced by suspicion and rejection of immigrant hopefuls.

Millions of Africans starve and die of AIDs while the richest nation in the world wastes millions of dollars bringing Iraq to its knees. Millions more in Muslim countries feel - with considerable justification - that Christians and Jews have been gathering to mount a holy war on Islam.

"Why," they ask, "when a few lunatics commit a crime, do the perpetrators get referred to as 'Muslims'?" When a bank robber also happens to be a Christian, is the report on the criminal carried as a Christian bank robber?

Was Michael Milken, convicted Wall Street felon, ever referred to as that New York Jewish criminal? Meyer Lasky was just another gangster, and one writer has said, "If a Jew must commit a murder or an embezzlement, let him be named Smith or Robinson."

"Please God," said another, "make it not be a Jew" upon hearing that President Kennedy had been assassinated. In short, just as "a great many Jews live in terror of the banner headline that screams out the guilt of someone with an obviously Jewish name, no religion wants the crimes of its members associated with the religion.

Why, then, do we read daily reports of criminal activities by Muslims? The idea, of course, dictated by a controlled media, is that writers and editors want the crimes associated with Islam. Some have even been brazen enough to say so.

This deprecation of Islam goes unnoticed in the West - at least in Western consciousness. It hasn't been missed, however, in the countries that are home to over 2 billion Muslims.

The populations of many other countries around the world despise Americans for their unfair exploitation of the natural resources and labour while keeping them in poverty and debt while oppressed with little hope for the future.

Americans may feel proud that they can scuttle the Kyoto accords, veto numerous Security Council resolutions or gain an unfair advantage with trade agreements, but when it does the rest of the world seethes with contempt.

That obviously doesn't concern most of my fellow Americans or they never would have allowed the respect that the world once had for us to disintegrate as it has.

I'm sitting on the frontline and undoubtedly fit the description of a "soft target" for those who have become radicalized by American behaviour - something I've never experienced in 35 years in the Middle East.

However, at my age, having lived a full life, I'm not going to cut and run simply because the US government has made life so hopeless for so many that a number of previously friendly people have turned into suicidal maniacs.

This is despite the fact that it's counterproductive to any cause that madmen in Al-Qaeda cells or Iraqis getting raped, abused and slaughtered, or Palestinians after five decades of torment might think they're serving.

How much suffering does it take before people break? I doubt that many Americans have asked psychiatrists to explain how people can be driven to sociopathic behaviour.

Does that mean that we deserve what we get? If, instead of seeking to understand the causes and possible cures for the bloody actions we've engendered, we carry on prompting the actions, we deserve whatever the outcome may be.

If, on the other hand, we ask why don't the Iraqis think of Americans as liberators from their brutal dictator, we could begin to see what we're doing to foment the resistance and why occupation isn't working.

If we ask what could be so destructive to a young Palestinian's mind that he or she would sacrifice his or her life and the future of a family to blow up a few Israelis, we might understand the horrors of the occupation we've been blindly bankrolling and fostering for half a century.

Fellow Americans, you impeached a president for lying about a silly affair he had with a young intern; and now you have a president who's proven himself a pathological liar about the much more serious business of life and death and you don't even waggle an accusing finger.

Shame on you, fellow Americans, for your apathy, your egocentricity, your inhumanity and your brash opinions of your self-importance.

If you live in fear because your own actions or inactivity have spawned the groups or individuals you fear, don't open your foolish yaps and blame Islam or Bin-Laden or Hamas or the Syrians or Iranians for your plight.

Look in your mirrors. You'll see the real reason for well-deserved fear. Then pray!