By Mark Sommer
Jan 22 2003 (IPS)

In the year since the attack on the World Trade Centre, unconditional sympathy for the US in its time of trauma has been transformed into intensely anti-American sentiment not only among distant Muslims but among close European allies, writes Mark Sommer, an author and columnist who hosts ”A World of Possibilities,” a syndicated weekly radio programme featuring innovative approaches to long-standing global challenges.

In this analysis for IPS, Sommer argues that a unilateral US attack on Iraq threatens to ignite this feeling into violent and indiscriminate retribution.

Far more Americans agree with critics of the Bush regime’s policies than outside observers realise. The mainstream US media so understates foreign and domestic opposition to Bush regime policies that even many Americans believe they are alone in their dissent.

It is essential that those who support cooperative security, human rights, economic and social justice, and environmental sustainability join forces across the increasingly impermeable ”Washington Wall” the Bush regime has erected between the US and the rest of the world. It will take the entire world to bring the first tyranny of the 21st century, the rogue superpower, back from the abyss of its imperial excess.

(*) Mark Sommer is an author and columnist who hosts ”A World of Possibilities,” a syndicated weekly radio programme featuring innovative approaches to long-standing global challenges.

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