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Palestinian teenagers danced before television cameras in the streets of the West Bank, sheer exuberance in their eyes as they celebrated the September 11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. A blow had been struck against the "Great Satan," the ally of Israel, their enemy. To them, the United States was the embodiment of the uncaring, modern, secular world that many among them reject. A week later, thousands of Pakistanis, adamantly opposed to threatened U.S. military strikes against suspected terrorist camps in Afghanistan, marched in Islamabad, chanting, "Down with America."

For many Americans watching the celebrations and protests on television or reading descriptions of them over their morning coffee-and even for many of the Bush Administration's senior war planners-these reactions, although they reflected the attitudes of a distinct minority, raised disturbing questions. "Why do they hate us?" President Bush asked in his September 20 address to Congress. Much of his audience-still stunned by the horrific attacks on American soil-wondered what degree of poverty or political resentment could lead anyone, of whatever religious or political convictions, to revel in the deaths of so many innocents in New York City and Washington?

Such harsh anti-American sentiments are as confounding for the Bush Administration as they have been for many of its predecessors. Any efforts to address the complex factors behind those views-efforts that must soon be given a high priority, according to many independent analysts-will likely take a backseat to the immediate military and diplomatic goals of tracking down Osama bin Laden and destroying his terrorist network. In the long run, however, said Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, "you can't use an army to fight an idea."

A sensible response by Washington to the hatred and resentment fueling terrorism will require an accurate assessment of the depth of such feelings and an acute understanding of their origins. "There are lots of reasons for anti-Americanism," Alterman continued. "Some have to do with perceptions of cultural onslaught, some with perceptions of the U.S. propping up corrupt governments around the world, and some with a sense that the U.S. has been utterly insensitive to Arab suffering," in both Palestine and Iraq.

Of course, the image of the "ugly American" is hardly new. The 1958 novel by that name characterized Uncle Sam as a bumbler, mindlessly mishandling his role as leader of the non- Communist world. That image has now been supplanted, in many Muslim nations, by a vision of America as the arrogant superpower, trampling other cultures and economies in a willful pursuit of its own interests.

Not everyone regards the United States as a greedy giant. "We should be careful of assuming that we are [universally] hated," warned Ronald Inglehart, who directs the World Values Survey at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). "It's not quite that simple." Anti- Americanism tends to spike in times of crisis. But there is little evidence of a long-term rise in such animosity, even in Islamic societies. And Islamic anti-secularism should not necessarily be equated with anti-Americanism. Critics of America's foreign policy still often praise U.S. values, send their children to American universities, and scarf down fries at McDonald's.

In any event, there is little the United States can do, either now or later, about sentiments that are focused on the kind of people Americans are: modern, democratic, materialistic, and culturally diverse. Those attributes cannot and will not be changed. The Bush Administration can, however, if it so chooses, possibly avoid feeding anti-Americanism by conducting with great care the coming anti-terrorist search-and-destroy missions. Whether American-led forces appear to be acting with indiscriminate violence or with restraint will greatly influence global attitudes toward the United States.

More important, once the drive against terrorism has run its course, the conditions that have helped create America- haters-economic deprivation, political powerlessness, resentment about U.S. high-handedness in the Middle East and elsewhere-will remain. "It is imperative that the United States examine, in our own national security interest, what creates such a burning rage to hurt Americans," said Judith Kipper, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "The perpetrators are criminals. But they were not born that way. They are a product of their environment."

Amid smoldering conflicts in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, extremism thrives when economies collapse or when states fail to provide such basic services as health care, education, and law and order. "Terrorists are drawn to extremist movements out of a feeling of severe deprivation- whether socioeconomic, political, or psychological," said Jessica Stern, a lecturer on terrorism at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "Inside extremist groups, the spiritually perplexed learn to focus on action. The weak become strong."

Washington's past responses in dealing with these issues, it's generally agreed, have left much to be desired. "But if we are going to talk about these terrorist acts as a Pearl Harbor," said Stern, "we also have to talk about a Marshall Plan" to get at the causes of terrorism. The Marshall Plan analogy may be a stretch. But, as many historians have asserted, the Western Allies' failure to boost economic development and democratization in Europe after World War I contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the outbreak of World War II. And it was America's very success in rebuilding nations in the wake of World War II that is credited with the absence, so far, of a World War III.

In Washington's rush to retaliate, forward-thinking remedies undoubtedly will get short shrift. In fact, in the current political climate, it would be difficult for prominent American policy makers to say much in public about addressing the origins of terrorism. Ultimately, though, a failure to finally root out the causes will leave intact the swamp of human ills in which extremists have multiplied and thrived.

Of Many Minds About America "If we want to be effective in addressing [anti-American, anti- secular, anti-global] concerns," said Marina Ottaway, a senior associate at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has recently conducted research in Egypt, "we have to listen to what people are saying."

But different people are saying different things about America and the values Americans hold dear. And those comments vary sharply from one Islamic country to another. Contrary to television images of flag-burning and embassy demonstrations, most people around the world have relatively favorable views of the United States, according to poll takers. For example, a 1999 survey of Islamic countries by the U.S. State Department found that more than half the Turks, Uzbekis, Nigerians, and Indonesians questioned said they were favorably disposed toward America, holding the United States in higher esteem than France or Russia. And such attitudes, said Mary McIntosh, a former State Department pollster who is now vice president of Princeton University's Survey Research Center, "are fairly stable, only varying in times of crisis or when the United States is particularly heavy-handed."

Still, anti-Americanism, and closely related public backlashes against globalization, modernization, and secularism, remain a potent cocktail, threatening to bedevil U.S. interests for some time to come. "Americans are perceived by others as living without constraints, as being arrogant," says Steve Clemons, executive vice president of the New America Foundation in Washington, "and that is hard for the rest of the world to stomach."

America-bashing has certainly been widespread in much of the Middle East in the wake of the collapse of the Palestinian- Israeli peace process and Washington's recent anti-terrorist saber-rattling. Not surprisingly, three-quarters of those living under Palestinian Authority rule tell pollsters they have an unfavorable opinion of the United States. A similar proportion of the Pakistani population thinks U.S. foreign policy undermines Pakistani interests, according to a recent Gallup Poll.

For the most part, however, Muslim publics are of many minds about the United States. They tend to be pro-American in Central Asia, West Africa, and India, and remarkably unfriendly in countries such as Jordan and Turkey. Moreover, according to Valpy FitzGerald, a professor of international economics at Oxford University's St. Anthony's College, "it's important to distinguish between anti-Americanism, directed at the power of the state, and the intense admiration for the American people and what American society has achieved," such as providing an adequate standard of living for most of its people and maintaining law and order.

And increasingly, the pulse of the bazaars and the mood in the universities also reflects attitudes toward the global economy and religion. "In large parts of the world," said Shaun Breslin, a professor of political economy at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, "people equate globalization with Americanization. It is seen as the imposition of American values, standards, and ideology, not just economics."

Two-thirds of Egyptians and Iranians and four-fifths of Jordanians consider a "cultural invasion" by the West to be very dangerous, according to a limited 1999 survey of Egypt, Jordan, and Iran by sociologist Mansoor Moaddel of Eastern Michigan University. These findings parallel the results of State Department polls undertaken in the mid-1990s, which showed that in Mali, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, roughly three-quarters of the public agreed that Western popular culture was a bad influence on their societies.

Moreover, in many Islamic countries there are powerful sentiments at odds with the secular attributes of American society. Moaddel's polling found that religion was a more important basis of personal identity than nationality in Egypt, Jordan, and Iran. And parents there viewed religious faith as a more important value to impart to their children than hard work, independence, or tolerance.

But again, it's not helpful to read too much in such findings. American perceptions that religion is inextricably enmeshed in Islamic societies are overly simplistic. Many Muslims generally favor Islam playing a significant role in society and in the schools, for example, but they also believe that religion should be kept separate from government policy.

Of course, the most salient concern at this moment is the influence of Islamic fundamentalism in Muslim societies, where-as in the United States-keeping the faith can mean many things to many people. At best, the role played by fundamentalism— a rejection of most modern influences on life and faith— can be measured only indirectly. In Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Nigeria, and Indonesia, two out of five people support traditionalist, but not necessarily fundamentalist, tenets, telling State Department pollsters there can be only one interpretation of the Koran. And in Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, and the lands under the Palestinian Authority, at least three of five people interviewed said that the Shariah, the Islamic legal code championed by fundamentalists, is the best basis for governance.

Contrary to another popular American misconception, Islamic fundamentalism is not primarily embraced by the ignorant and the backward. In fact, throughout the Islamic world, the better-educated people are, the more observant they become-as measured by prayer practices or the observance of holy days. In Pakistan, for example, people with university degrees are twice as likely as those who are illiterate to support the strict application of the (to many Westerners, unusually harsh) Islamic legal code. In Egypt, the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood has made great inroads among professionals; many brotherhood members are lawyers, doctors, and engineers. So itshould come as no surprise that many terrorists involved in the World Trade Center and Pentagon strikes were well-educated.

Fundamentalists, said Moaddel, who has interviewed many Muslim Brotherhood members, "are knowledgeable enough to know something is wrong with their government and the way the U.S. is treating them, but [lacking exposure to the humanities or social sciences], they are not knowledgeable enough to be able to devise solutions for their societies." Fundamentalism offers them structured responses.

It's Not Just the Poverty There is no simple explanation for the fact that anti- Americanism, anti-globalism, and anti-secularism have taken root in Islamic societies.

"There will always be people who are against you because you are powerful and rich," said Breslin. What has changed is the means-the weapons-available to the discontented. Jewish zealots 2,000 years ago chafed under Roman rule but could do little immediately, or directly, to challenge Rome's dictates. Similarly, Indian nationalists in the early 20th century resented British power, but at the time all that the impoverished people of Bihar could do was boycott British goods. As the bloody attacks of September 11 demonstrated, however, today's anti- Americans don't have to bide their time; they have the capacity to project their anger explosively to the very heart of the United States.

Washington's close ties with Israel certainly strongly color Arab sentiments toward the United States. Many Islamics share a profound sense of humiliation about Tel Aviv's repeated defeats of neighboring Arab armies. In much of the region, many people believe that Israel's successes were possible only because of Washington's support. Many also feel mounting resentment about the difficult conditions Palestinians face on the West Bank.

"When the peace process had some future," said Moaddel, "I spoke with some of the activists in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan. Many thought they should have dialogue with America. But when the new intifada broke out, all hell broke loose."

There is similar resentment throughout the region over America's seeming indifference toward the suffering of Iraqi citizens. A decade after the Persian Gulf War, it is the plight of women and children in Baghdad, not the fate of Kuwait, that stirs public emotions. And for those Iraqis' desperate living conditions, many in the Middle East blame America's ongoing economic embargo, not Saddam Hussein's failure to use available oil money to buy food and medicines for his people.

Economic deprivation has also created an environment that nurtures radicalism. To be sure, the region is not marked by the kind of income inequality found in parts of Latin America or Africa. But the oil wealth of the Persian Gulf states, where per capita income exceeds that of Greece or Portugal, contrasts sharply with the poverty found in Yemen or Pakistan. In the latter, a third of the people still live on less than a dollar a day.

And economic prospects are worsening. Since the early 1970s, the populations of Egypt and Iraq have doubled, and those in Jordan and Saudi Arabia have nearly tripled. As a result, per capita income in Arab states has grown at an anemic annual rate of 0.3 percent. The labor force in these countries is growing faster than that of any other region in the world, far outstripping available jobs, and deepening the pool of restless, unemployed young men.

A country's relative economic failure may be even more psychologically galling than its people's absolute economic distress. "Economists forget that perceptions are more important than reality," Breslin said. "The real question is, `Are people better or worse off than they think they should be?' "

In the 1950s, per capita income in Egypt was about the same as Korea's. Today, it is less than a fifth that of the Asian economic tiger. A half-century ago, Saudi Arabia's per capita income was higher than Taiwan's. Today, Saudi income is only half that of the Asian island nation. Seeing still-proud societies falling behind further compounds Islamic humiliation.

Moreover, globalization has accelerated the pace of economic and social change. "It's not knowing what will happen next that creates a sense of insecurity," said FitzGerald. "Millenarian movements [such as Islamic fundamentalism] arise in times of extreme insecurity."

Unfortunately, the governments of most Islamic states have little capacity to mediate these social and economic tensions through democratic institutions. "In comparison to almost every other region of the world, the Arab world has failed to undergo a democratic transformation," said Amy Hawthorne, a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Generals, kings, and other hereditary rulers still run most Arab societies. Elected leaders tend to hold their jobs for life. Parliaments have little power. It's little wonder that Freedom House, the Washington-based think tank, ranks most Islamic nations as "not free."

"People feel frustrated and cut off from power," said Thomas Carothers, a democracy expert at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington. A majority of Turks, two-fifths of Egyptians, and a third of Iranians distrust their governments. Tellingly, the more education people have, the less faith they have in their elected leaders.

Nevertheless, the Islamic public shares a broad consensus that democracy is the best form of government. More than four out of five people in Muslim countries express such sentiments. Of course, definitions of democracy vary markedly from country to country. In Turkey, for example, only one in 20 people place great store in being free to criticize the government or in having a multiparty political system. So it is not safe to assume that an Islamic democracy would necessarily bear much resemblance to its American cousin.

What Can Be Done?

A strategy for countering Islamic anti-Americanism will require Washington to pursue and promote both more-enlightened public diplomacy and substantive initiatives to promote democracy and improve the economic conditions in Muslim societies.

First must come better understanding. "The British, the French, even the Romans had a more subtle grasp of the nature of the countries in the region," FitzGerald said. "It's not the case that the U.S. is incompetent. You displayed a deep understanding of local politics in France and Germany after the [Second World] War." Washington simply hasn't tried hard enough.

The paucity of Arab speakers and Islamic experts in the U.S. government, in American think tanks, and in the influential news media has been obvious for a generation. "There aren't American officials who can talk to Arab audiences through the media in Arabic," complained Alterman. There is a need, he said, to speak directly to the Arab masses, to make the case "that the United States is not the reason for the high price of vegetable oil in your country, and that the U.S. can't transform your government overnight."

In conveying that message, said Inglehart, "we would do well to be a little more tactful and to show a little more respect."

That includes being conscious of our own hypocrisy. "Washington has to tell the Israelis to rein in their own fundamentalists," advised Lord William Wallace, a member of the British House of Lords and a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. And, said FitzGerald, "if you say there are to be no safe harbors for terrorists, you have to do something to roll up the [anti-Castro] networks in Miami and [the Irish Republican Army fundraising] in Boston."

Former State Department officials also insist that during the coming "war on terrorism," the Administration must resist the temptation to turn all U.S. diplomats in the region into spies and to use the Voice of America and other information outlets as pure propaganda channels (as recently advocated by conservative New York Timescolumnist William Safire). Such expedient actions would only confirm the most paranoid anti-American sentiments in the Islamic world and destroy the credibility of U.S. public diplomacy for the long run.

"If we can show that we know what we are doing," said one U.S. diplomat who has long worked in the Arab world, "that we are determined to do it and that we are going to win, even people who hate us are probably going to adjust their expectations and attitudes accordingly. In that case, I think we have a pretty good chance of avoiding a massive outpouring of anti-American sentiment, even in the Muslim and the Arab world, even if we end up taking military action."

Tackling underlying economic woes will be tougher. The Administration is already contemplating a major economic aid package for nations on the front lines of the war on terrorism, such as Pakistan, and for countries with large, potentially volatile Muslim populations, among them Indonesia and the Philippines. Assistance could include more foreign aid, fresh loans from the International Monetary Fund, and a quick rollover of existing debts. In addition, the United States has already extended new trade privileges to Indonesia and could expand that program for other Islamic nations. Congressional passage of the long-stalled U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement provides symbolic, if not real, economic benefit. And the Administration could revive a similar, long-discussed deal with Egypt.

But, Stern said, "helping to educate youth might turn out to be among the wisest investments the United States could make." Throughout the region, secondary school enrollment is relatively low and adult illiteracy is disproportionately high. Fundamentalist Islamic sects have frequently stepped into the void. In many rural areas of Pakistan, for example, free government schools are not available. By educating, clothing, housing, and feeding the poorest of the poor, fundamentalist religious schools win converts to their cause. These academies now number in the tens of thousands. Most offer only religious instruction, ignoring math, science, and other secular subjects that would help their students function in a modern society. Pakistani officials estimate that at least one in 10 of these schools also promote extremism, including jihad, or holy war, against the West.

In Egypt and Jordan, where the state controls religious schools, teachers are forbidden to teach jihad against the West. Washington could lean on the Pakistani government to take control of its educational system, to equip women as well as men with modern skills and could provide Islamabad with the resources to succeed. One obstacle may be that, according to surveys, majorities in a number of Muslim countries strongly believe that religion should have greater influence over education, not less.

Not Merely Aid, but Overhaul For these economies to begin growing faster, profound changes long overdue, including trade liberalization and an overhaul of the domestic service sector-everything from banking to transport-must be imposed.

Overly rigid economies that are not diverse enough to produce modern goods and services are barriers to growth in the Arab world. Tariffs in Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia are up to four times as high as those in Israel. Governments, on average, employ more than one of every six people, double the world average. Non- tariff-related trading costs-such as government paperwork and corruption-account for 10 percent of the price of goods, according to estimates. State-owed banks still control a large share of all banking assets. Financial regulatory supervision is poor. Capital markets are underdeveloped.

Each nation's service sector, banking system, and accounting practices must be retooled. Such broad changes would be needed to create more domestic, private jobs, taking the edge off the political debate over increased competition from abroad. The combination of service-sector changes and trade liberalization could increase incomes by 13 percent in Tunisia and by 10 percent in Egypt, according to estimates in a forthcoming Council on Foreign Relations report on Middle Eastern regional trade and investment.

Finally, Washington must at last swallow hard and press for sweeping democratic changes. "In Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern countries," said Carothers, "the United States has preserved close ties with autocratic regimes that serve U.S. interests on oil, the Arab-Israeli peace process, and resistance to Islamic fundamentalist groups." Such support, however, has arguably arrested the evolution of democratic institutions, and has incurred the wrath of both democrats and fundamentalists.

Obviously, during the next few months at the very least, the Bush Administration has little choice but to move cautiously on the democratization front. Policy makers in the capital-and generals on faraway fronts-must handle Pakistan, in particular, with great care to avoid toppling an already unstable regime. The last thing Washington needs in Islamabad is a new, fundamentalist government in control of an estimated 20 nuclear weapons. Similarly, the United States needs a stable Saudi government to sustain world oil production. Moreover, in the short run, if fair and free elections were held, it is not at all clear what kind of governments many of these electorates would choose. Some would undoubtedly be antithetical to U.S. interests.

But some pro-democracy initiatives can still be launched. During the past eight years, the United States has invested only $300 million in democracy-building in the region, primarily in Egypt and the West Bank, to promote free and fair elections, judicial and legislative reform, and bureaucratic decentralization. But these efforts could use much more money.

"We have to encourage Arab governments to engage in more dialogue with their citizens," Carothers said, "for the sake of alleviating pressure from below." At the very least, he said, Washington should "be ready to respond boldly [to] the unexpected weakening of a dictator or the threatened breakdown of what democracy exists."

In the end, coping with anti-Americanism, anti-globalism, and anti-secularism in the Islamic world has to be a basic component of Washington's "war on terrorism." Telling America's story, spurring economic development, and promoting democracy won't be as compelling, or as satisfying, given the nation's thirst for justice and revenge, in the form of prompt air and ground strikes. But in many Muslim societies, fear of the modern world and resentment toward the United States run deep, and the contemplated U.S. military actions are likely to only intensify such feelings. Unless Washington addresses those concerns, the economic and psychological conditions that gave birth to terrorism will remain and might worsen.