HONOLULU -- As anti-American emotions have erupted in the Islamic world and Asia, the response from Americans has increasingly taken on a hard edge. Some of the rejoinders have been predictable, but others are a surprise.
The Pew Research Center recently published a survey reporting that the image of the United States has been tarnished "most dramatically in Muslim nations," with hatred of America concentrated in the Middle East and Central Asia. In Southeast Asia, the favorable image of the U.S. in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, has dropped by 14 points in two years, to 61 percent.
Anti-American demonstrations in South Korea, a U.S. ally, have been so strong that President Kim Dae Jung last week personally appealed for calm. The Yomiuri Shimbun, a newspaper in Tokyo, said that 39 percent of the Japanese surveyed do not trust the U.S. despite the 50-year alliance. A Chinese white paper warned the U.S. against arms sales to Taiwan or forming a military alliance with Taiwan.