: BY RAYMOND SOKOLOV


: It takes targeting terror, apparently, to make Americans the target

: of full-bore anti-Americanism. We've all (he's already got your agreement eh?) read a lot about this kind

: of hostility in recent weeks--America as demon of the world, as

: portrayed in, say, Le Monde and the Guardian....

Mick says:-I have to say I have not seen the articles he's talking about and would have liked him to give me some pointers as to what has been written that he has read portraying america as a demon...otherwise he's talking bollocks...and would then have to be treated as one



: paper towels standing on end on the sill. In a small way it's become

: a talisman for me of our proud national response to terror..that madman bin Laden is still loose and another Al Queda will spring up eventually (yeah fatalistic old me)If the

: attack had to happen, at least we stood tall: We knew what we had to

: do, we did it and the world is better for it--could you elaborate on how then please the world is a better place (use facts..as in the roses now smell sweeter...or a dollar goes further...)?  and will be better

: still as we continue...continue what???

: The idea seems so obvious, so undeniable, but the shocking truth is

: that plenty of people in Europe--and not just Islamic

: agitproppers--view our victory and our new antiterrorist policy with

: alarm...again he's surmising i'd say And, as always, they are ready to tell you to your face what

: a bumptious, callow, redneck sort of place you come from, something...now would I say that people...would I call you all rednecks and I'm european...have I ever called you rednecks...

: you are too benighted by media cheerleading to see for yourself....Thanks mate!

: Take my friend the grand rabbi's grandson, who fled his Middle

: Eastern home with his family as a boy, shortly after the creation of

: the state of Israel ended peaceful coexistence for Jews and Muslims

: in the Arab world. Now comfortably ensconced in a European

: democracy, he devotes himself to promoting knowledge of Middle

: Eastern culture and Jewish-Muslim amity.

: My friend was visiting New York on the morning that news of the

: abduction of Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi broke. I

: reacted angrily to the report, expecting a sympathetic reaction from

: across the breakfast table. Instead, I inadvertently unleashed a

: torrent of anti- Americanism: I had been brainwashed by the U.S.

: press, I was told. I needed to be reprogrammed. Didn't I know more

: innocent people had died in Afghanistan than at the Trade Center?

: Wasn't it repellent that the New York Times was publishing

: obituaries of the Sept. 11 dead every day but never bothered to run

: anything about foreign victims of the war we were forcing on

: Afghanistan? Why did Americans care only about themselves? Our

: swaggering just encouraged Israeli right-wingers to kill more

: Palestinians when many more of them had already died than Israelis.

: No point in arguing with this person, whose idea of the U.S. press

: and America comes to him filtered through an old-line socialist

: daily ( oh come on then, which old-line socialist paper is it) and from conversations with know- it-all caf� intellectuals.

: No point in citing facts (ooohhhh facts) or asking why the American victory over the

: Taliban shouldn't be heralded as a heroic step toward a safer world....because it probably isn't a safer world yet and most of you will be 'bricking' it (as in shitting a brick)when you get on a plane..well i would anyway

: No point in asking why his only response to American success was

: hysterical criticism instead of praise.

: What can you expect? After saving Europeans from themselves in two

: world wars (my country was neutral and if the Nazis had messed with us we'd have knocked ten kinds of shit out of them) and protecting them from Soviet invasion (same with them), should we hope

: for anything but resentment? In western Germany it is commonplace to

: see plaques on public buildings explain that they had to be rebuilt

: after their destruction in 1945 by Allied bombing. Memorials to

: Germans who died in that war do not generally list the Germans of

: Jewish heritage who also perished then.

: Anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism go hand in hand...sorry nope they don't even if my

: friend doesn't recognize it (and our soklov's not a patronising sort of chap no bloody way). It doesn't pay to stand out. Losers

: envy winners....aha so America's a winner is it...there were no winners in this mess...just lots of dead people. Citizens of former European imperial powers are

: ashamed of their current decadence (ahem...not really they don't give a monkey's to be honest) so how can they be expected not

: to turn up their noses and shudder at our power and vigor? oh you beast you Mr sokolov! all that power and vigor's just too much for me

: Pathetic, ragged Islamic societies (oh yeah?) see how we live on television(as in all americans live the same)and

: hate us for using half the world's resources...(well hate you is a bit strong but ahmm...are concerned definitely) They see how Israelis prosper without petrochemical

: trillions and hate them for it too. Nahhhh! we don't Hate them for winning wars.Nahhh! Hate

: success because they are failures...are we? And so, when the Trade Center

: towers collapsed, (some) Muslims cheered and said we had it coming. When

: suicide bombers kill Israelis in buses, in markets and at a

: religious celebration, (some) Europeans can say, "The Jews had it coming."

: They've said it before, haven't they?

: Mr. Sokolov is editor of The Wall Street Journal's Leisure & Arts and writes articles that well...you know...sad really...is that it? is that the staple sort of reading for americans from day to day looking for insight...oh dear...is that as good as it gets...

Peace and love to the rednecks of the western world...from the vile inferior anti american envious Mick in middle earth...so I've just blown any chance of db coming over here now tough shit