The news media always reports what Americans think about The War On Terror, but what about the rest of the world?

“the vast majority of the Muslims believe that President Bush’s campaign against terrorism has in fact increased the threat of terrorism and extremism very significantly after 9/11. With regard to Iraq, what they’re saying is that the terrorists have recruited more people, radicalized more people, and raised funds from Muslims just by projecting US invasion and occupation of Iraq as an attack against Islam and as an attack against the Muslims.”

“The White House war on terrorism is generally viewed here in Kenya as a futile exercise that is exacerbating the insecurity across the world. It is perceived from this end that the major perpetrators of terrorism in the world are the inequities that exist in the world – economic, social and political. Those people who believe that they are downtrodden will continue to perpetuate acts of terrorism.”

“It is generally perceived that America has a major role to play in this inequitable distribution of resources across the world. In fact, the general perception is that the average American has no understanding, has no intention, has no will to understand anything that happens outside of the United States – and for that reason their war on terrorism is a total misconception without any relevance to the real world where the majority of the people live.”

“The American war on terror is perceived in Lebanon and much of the Middle East as a sign of the combination of arrogance and confusion that is driving American policy, not only in the Middle East but I think in much of the world.”

“While there’s agreement that terror is a problem that must be fought – and we have suffered from it much more than the United States has, we in this region in the Middle East – there’s also a sense that the United States has mis-diagnosed the nature of the terror problem, exaggerated its threat, confused hopelessly a whole range of different groups – some of which are terrorists, some of which are doing legitimate resistance to occupation – and basically tried to come up with a new formula that substitutes for the Cold War.”

“The United States calls ‘terrorists’ anybody that it doesn’t like or that Israel doesn’t like, because people like Hezbollah and Hamas who are fighting a war of resistance against Israeli occupation are labeled as ‘terrorists,’ while most of the world sees them as legitimate resistance fighters when they’re fighting the Israeli army.”

These quotes come from Frank Njenga, the president of the African Association of Psychiatrists and Allied Professionals, Rohan Gunaratna, the principal investigator for the United Nations’ Terrorism Prevention Branch, and Rami G. Khouri, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut and editor-at-large at the Daily Star newspaper. It is worth noting, that these men were not asked to simply state their own opinions. They were summing up the feelings of entire regions.

Ignore them if you want, but when the rest of the world calls us fools, I think it is worth taking a look at what we are doing.