Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Not everybody loves us

Friday, Dec. 14, 2001 | 4:53 a.m.

Walt went on to report, " 'You're Americans?' he yelled. When it was explained that this reporter is South African, he didn't stop. 'I don't trust you!' Rahman raged. 'I don't believe you! I hate you! Get out of my face now!' "

The December issue of the American Journalism Review dedicated a three-page piece with the headline "The Rage" and leading with the question "Why Do They Hate Us?" The AJR article, written by Alina Tugend, is balanced and even points to the lack of foreign news provided by the U.S. media during recent years as contributing to our surprise that not everybody loves us.

Tugend goes on to write, " 'When you don't cover the rest of the world, it's hard to know what they think,' notes S. Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. 'I'd love to blame the media, but it's the public -- foreign news is a tough sell. There's not much of a popular market out there for it.' " This, the writer adds, is probably a past problem because of the recent terror attacks launched right here at home.

Respected writers, including a retired admiral and several scholars, point to our national leaders cuddling up with oppressive regimes. Michael Rubin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "Washington should not negotiate with rogue regimes, at least not until they move beyond mere rhetoric and unilaterally cease all weapons proliferation and terror sponsorship without precondition. Perhaps State Department bureaucrats believe they can be party to a great compromise in Sudan or Iran, but in Khartoum and Tehran the people know the truth will be quite the opposite."

Rubin's observations must be taken into consideration as future foreign policies are made but, as in past conflicts, we have some voices talking about what happened Sept. 11, 2001, being our fault. Others are willing to worry more about how the world sees us than they are concerned about the blow struck by those fanatics. The dinner party intellectual suggesting we should put ourselves in the shoes of people who hate us is answered in The New York Observer newspaper by Molly Haskell. She writes, "To put ourselves in their shoes, our women could wear shawls and stay home, say, three days a week; our men could grow beards, pray five times a day and shave their armpits. And most importantly, whenever the conversation turns to Mr. bin Laden, we should revert to self-flagellation; we should stand in the corner and repeat, over and over again, 'We're the bad guy s.' Not goodhearted empathetic us, of course, but our parents, the folks in the White House and the administration, the mil! itary and the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. For to many on the left, those daddy surrogates -- not the Islamic extremists -- are the real them. And the us is the smart, the hip, the intellectual, the peace-lovers with utopian yearnings and a sneaking admiration for cave-dwelling hair-shirt demagogues like Mr. bin Laden."

It has been my privilege to watch the ebb and flow of public opinion during times of stress and strain. Keeping up on what happens in the world is important to me, and I have found reasons to both agree and disagree with some of our foreign policies. A most recent example is the mistreatment of our POWs used as slave labor for Japanese companies during World War II. This has been done to make our ally Japan happy, and for this our government should be ashamed.

When it comes to the big picture today, there is no logical reason to make excuses for the terrorists who have shamefully slaughtered so many innocent fellow countrymen. In addition, after living through segments of nine decades, I couldn't care less about people who hate me and other Americans. Our goal is to send them the message that they can hate us all they want to, but if they don't enjoy pain, then they have attacked the wrong people. If we do a good job there will be fewer of them alive Sept. 11, 2002, than were living a year earlier.