Mohsin Hamid's Article

Here is a great article by Mohsin Hamid, the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I finished the book last week and today I literally stumbled into this article in yesterday’s Washington Post via Slate.

He’s exploring the question of “why they hate us” and in so doing he puts into words how many foreign people feel. But he also shares with us his duality—that part of him is pissed off at how his “other” country means so little to the average American.

It’s really a great article and the bit about the difference in Chapters in history is a great analogy. Read the whole thing, here’s a snippet:

Part of the reason people abroad resent the United States is something Americans can do very little about: envy. The richest, most powerful country in the world attracts the jealousy of others in much the same way that the richest, most powerful man in a small town attracts the jealousy of others. It will come his way no matter how kind, generous or humble he may be.

But there is another major reason for anti-Americanism: the accreted residue of many years of U.S. foreign policies. These policies are unknown to most Americans. They form only minor footnotes in U.S. history. But they are the chapter titles of the histories of other countries, where they have had enormous consequences. America's strength has made it a sort of Gulliver in world affairs: By wiggling its toes it can, often inadvertently, break the arm of a Lilliputian.