The public antipathy of American policies of ruthless aggression and crude pressure against Muslims, in evidence since 9/11, has tended to grow with time in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Islamic world as there has been no let-up in their intensity. Although this attitude was reflected even in the treatment of Muslims entering the US or its own Muslim population, the foreign lands it has invaded have been the greatest sufferers and are seething with the hatred of it. In Pakistan, which is one of the countries directly affected by the war on terror, that feeling has been no less acute. Not only because of what was happening in Iraq and Afghanistan but also indirectly because of the government's military action against the tribesmen taken under American pressure. Since other Western powers went along with the US and more or less copied its behaviour, they also came in for criticism. Their participation with troops in the war on terror, while generally branding or suspecting all Muslims as terrorists, and acts like the publication of blasphemous cartoons showed the hatred they felt of Muslims as well as their faith. Except for the relatively small group of people who seem to be genetically predisposed to all that represents America or the West, hardly anyone could be found in Pakistan and other Muslim countries endorsing the blind pursuit of vengeance that shows itself so manifestly in the slaughter of innocent men, women and children, which inevitably resulted from the indiscriminate bombing of towns and villages in Iraq. In Afghanistan, the proverbial decimation of Tora Bora by 1,000 pounder daisycutters apart, the US anger has been killing civilian revellers at marriage parties and ordinary social get-togethers. Only last month (August 22nd to be exact), a missile attack on a village in western Afghanistan took the lives of about 90 men, women and children - the figure is supported by the Kabul government and verified as correct by UN investigators; yet the US keeps insisting that only seven civilians died. According to independent sources, hundreds of thousands civilians have so far lost their lives only in Iraq and the figure for Afghanistan could not be less than tens of thousands. And the number of those who found their lives disrupted runs into millions. The US desperation and Pakistan's helpless acquiescence in its pressure have made matters worse: the Pentagon planes hitting a village (Damadola) in Bajaur Agency early 2006, the first US strike in the tribal area in which 18 civilians were killed, and later attacks at intervals on suspected hideouts of militants in the area, causing a large number of civilian casualties are some of the instances, which suggest that conclusion. The feeling of hatred had thus become reinforced. Islamabad's initial denial of the American acts of aggression and later, when the incidents just could not be glossed over, puny protest to Washington provided the Pakistani public enough justification for concluding that the government was, indeed, complicit in their commission. And now the first week of this month witnessed the Americans simply landing their troops at Angoor Adda in South Waziristan, shooting down 20 civilians, who included women and children, boarding their helicopters in which they had come and calmly leaving. The blatant assault provoked an outrage nationwide. Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reflected the urgency President Bush feels in making some crucial gain in the Afghan war as he comes to the end of his second term at the White House, when he said that the US was "running out of time" to win it. This urgency led the Pentagon to send ground forces into the tribal areas. The round condemnation of the attack by COAS General Ashfaq Kayani and commitment not to allow any foreign operation, voiced a week after it had occurred, came only as small consolation. By the time the view that the raid could not have been made without the understanding of Islamabad had become so entrenched in the minds of the chattering classes that it failed to revive the hope that the US would not make such forays again. Besides, there was little that emanated from Washington that affirmed that hope. On the contrary, a Pentagon official was quoted by a correspondent as saying that more such incidents could take place given credible evidence of the presence of a high-level target in the area. The wrong policies, inflicting indiscriminate death and destruction, the US has pursued in the context of the war on terror have roused anger and resentment in the Muslim world to a high pitch. Although the overwhelming majority consists of peaceful citizens and is against militancy, the ruthlessness employed in rooting it out has made it anti-American as well. E-mail: mqkay@yahoo.co.uk