By Salman Rushdie Salman Rushdie is the author of "Fury" and other novels.
On Sept. 5 and 6 the State Department will host a high-powered conference on anti-Americanism, an unusual step indicating the depth of American concern about this increasingly globalized phenomenon. Anti-Americanism can be mere shallow name-calling.
A recent article in Britain's Guardian newspaper described Americans as having "a bug up their collective arse the size of Manhattan" and suggested that " 'American' is a type of personality which is intense, humourless, partial to psychobabble and utterly convinced of its own importance."
More seriously, anti-Americanism can be contradictory: When the United States failed to intervene in Bosnia, that was considered wrong, but when it did subsequently intervene in Kosovo, that was wrong too. Anti-Americanism can be hypocritical: wearing blue jeans or Donna Karan, eating fast food or Alice Waters-style cuisine, their heads full of American music, movies, poetry and literature, the apparatchiks of the international cultural commissariat decry the baleful influence of the American culture that nobody is forcing them to consume. It can be misguided; the logical implication of the Western-liberal opposition to America's Afghan war is that it would be better if the Taliban were still in power. And it can be ugly; the post-Sept. 11 crowing of the serves-you-right brigade was certainly that.
However, during the past year the Bush administration has made a string of foreign policy miscalculations, and the State Department conference must acknowledge this.
After the brief flirtation with consensus-building during the Afghan operation, the United States' brazen return to unilateralism has angered even its natural allies. The Republican grandee James Baker has warned President Bush not to go it alone, at least in the little matter of effecting a "regime change" in Iraq.
In the year's major crisis zones, the Bushies have been getting things badly wrong. According to a Security Council source, the reason for the United Nations' lamentable inaction during the recent Kashmir crisis was that the United States (with Russian backing) blocked all attempts by member states to mandate the United Nations to act. But if the United Nations is not to be allowed to intervene in a bitter dispute between two member states, both nuclear powers of growing political volatility, in an attempt to defuse the danger of nuclear war, then what on Earth is it for? Many observers of the problems of the region will also be wondering how long Pakistani-backed terrorism in Kashmir will be winked at by America because of Pakistan's support for the "war against terror" on its other frontier. Many Kashmiris will be angry that their long-standing desire for an autonomous state is being ignored for the sake of U.S. realpolitik.
And as the Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf seizes more and more power and does more and more damage to his country's constitution, the U.S. government's decision to go on hailing him as a champion of democracy does more damage to America's already shredded regional credibility.
Nor is Kashmir the only South Asian grievance. The massacres in the Indian state of Gujarat, mostly of Indian Muslims by fundamentalist Hindu mobs, have been shown to be the result of planned attacks led by Hindu political organizations.
But in spite of testimony presented to a congressional commission, the U.S. administration has done nothing to investigate U.S.-based organizations that are funding these groups, such as the World Hindu Council. Just as American Irish fundraisers once bankrolled the terrorists of the Provisional IRA, so, now, shadowy bodies across America are helping to pay for mass murder in India, while the U.S. government turns a blind eye.
Once again, the supposedly high-principled rhetoric of the "war against terror" is being made to look like a smoke screen for a highly selective pursuit of American vendettas.
Apparently Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are terrorists who matter; Hindu fanatics and Kashmiri killers aren't. This double standard makes enemies.
In the heat of the dispute over Iraq strategy, South Asia has become a sideshow. (America's short attention span creates enemies, too.) And it is in Iraq that George W. Bush may be about to make his biggest mistake, and to unleash a generation-long plague of anti-Americanism that could make the present epidemic look like a time of rude good health.
Inevitably, the reasons lie in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like it or not, much of the world thinks of Israel as the 51st state, America's client and surrogate, and Bush's obvious rapport with Ariel Sharon does nothing to change the world's mind. Of course the suicide bombings are vile, but until America persuades Israel to make a lasting settlement with the Palestinians, anti-American feeling will continue to rise; and if, in the present highly charged atmosphere, the United States does embark on the huge, risky military operation suggested Monday by Vice President Dick Cheney, then the result may very well be the creation of that united Islamic force that was bin Laden's dream. Saudi Arabia would almost certainly feel obliged to expel U.S. forces from its soil (thus capitulating to one of bin Laden's main demands). Iran -- which so recently fought a long, brutal war against Iraq -- would surely support its erstwhile enemy, and might even come into the conflict on the Iraqi side.
The entire Arab world would be radicalized and destabilized. What a disastrous twist of fate it would be if the feared Islamic jihad were brought into being not by the al Qaeda gang but by the president of the United States and his close advisers.
Do those close advisers include Colin Powell, who clearly prefers diplomacy to war? Or is the State Department's foregrounding of the issue of anti-Americanism a means of providing hard evidence to support the Powell line and undermining the positions of the hawks to whom Bush listens most closely? It seems possible. Paradoxically, a sober look at the case against America may serve American interests better than the patriotic "let's roll" arguments that are being trumpeted on every side.