This is a deeply sad article about the depth of anti-Americanism across the world, specifically in Central Asia. The conclusion: it'll never, ever go away. We're going to be hated for a long long time and no matter what we do, it's going to somehow be interpreted as selfish, wrong, and unfair. It's too bad.

Here's a sad section:

The quietest girl in the class shyly suggested, "But Muslims have to defend other Muslims against attack"

I stopped her mid-sentence. "What if the Muslims are in the wrong? And what happens when Muslims attack other Muslims?"

"Muslims don't attack other Muslims," she insisted.

"Iran and Iraq? The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait? Should I go on?"

A boy in the back raised his hand. "But Muslims have no choice but to hate the United States and declare a jihad, since the United States is always attacking Muslims," he said.

"Is that true?" I pressed. "Where have we attacked Muslims?"

"I don't know. That's what people say."

"In Bosnia and Somalia, we were supporting Muslims," I said. "And in the war against Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait, we were supporting Muslims who were attacked by other Muslims."

A stony silence, more of bewilderment than hostility, enveloped the room, as if I'd just announced to a group of American students that the earth wasn't round, or that Utah was just a cartographer's fantasy. It was the first of many retreats in the face of an unaccustomed challenge to official truths.

Tired and cranky, I filled the void by turning a table: "Can you explain to me why there's never been a call for a jihad against Russia?"

The room tensed. "Why should Muslims be angry at the Russians? The Russians are our brothers."

"But your 'brothers' have been attacking Islam for decades," I countered, ticking off the list: the suppression of Islam in Central Asia, the invasion of Afghanistan, the war in Chechnya.

"But the Russians are poor," they responded.

My second lesson in Anti-Americanism 101 followed swiftly in my afternoon class.

"America got what it deserved because it always meddles in everyone else's business," exclaimed a senior named Rada, just moments after her classmates offered me their formal sympathies for the attacks on New York and Washington.

"What 'meddling' are you talking about?" I asked.

They all shouted at once: Vietnam, Bosnia, Serbia, Haiti, Somalia, Iraq. Their knowledge of history, well beyond what American teenagers could have mustered, was cold comfort. Could they really see no difference between Vietnam, which I thought of as old-style American imperialism, and Bosnia or Haiti, President Clinton's postmodern brand?

I interrupted the litany: "If Uzbekistan invaded Kyrgyzstan to annex the Kyrgyz part of the Fergana Valley, what would you want the United States to do?" The lush valley had been split between the Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Tajik Soviet Socialist Republics by Stalin, no slouch in the "divide and conquer" department. But in the post-Soviet era, many Uzbeks lusted after the entire basin.

"You must defend us," they said.

"But we can't," I responded. "That would be meddling."

"Oh, no, it would be different if the Uzbeks invaded. You wouldn't be meddling. You would be defending us."
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Why don't people go with what benefits them the most? Who cares about American intentions? And why do people have this sense of entitlement, that American needs to or should help them when they're in danger. They should freaking help themselves.