Salman Rushdie weighs in on US foreign policy:
On Sept. 5 and 6 the State Department will host a high-powered conference on anti-Americanism, an unusual step indicating the depth of American concern about this increasingly globalized phenomenon. Anti-Americanism can be mere shallow name-calling. A recent article in Britain’s Guardian newspaper described Americans as having “a bug up their collective arse the size of Manhattan” and suggested that ” ‘American’ is a type of personality which is intense, humourless, partial to psychobabble and utterly convinced of its own importance.” (…) However, during the past year the Bush administration has made a string of foreign policy miscalculations, and the State Department conference must acknowledge this. After the brief flirtation with consensus-building during the Afghan operation, the United States’ brazen return to unilateralism has angered even its natural allies.