Can we make them hate us less?

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Right after 9/11, Americans wanted to know, “Why do they hate us?” Five years later, Muslim antagonism toward the U.S. has unquestionably grown worse. Today, the questions are: Should we care? And if we do, can we do anything about it?

Many Americans have comforted themselves with the notion that while most Muslims may dislike U.S. government policies, they don’t hate the American people. And they may have accepted the Bush administration’s arguments that many American values are universal human values which Muslims share. These illusions are shattered by the latest from WorldPublicOpinion.org.

We may see ourselves as a sometimes erring but always well-meaning hegemon. But large majorities in Egypt, Pakistan, Morocco and Indonesia—all purported allies and major recipients of U.S. aid—believe the United States aims to weaken and divide Islam, spread Christianity in the Middle East, and maintain control over oil. In each country, only a minority agreed with the statement that “There have been times in American history where it has helped to promote the welfare of others.”

Worse, on key issues, respondents shared Al Qaeda’s agenda—not America’s. They want the U.S. to withdraw its troops and its military bases from all Islamic countries. While all strongly disapproved of attacks on American civilians, 68% in Morocco and 91% in Egypt “strongly” approved of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, as did 35% of Pakistanis and 19% of Indonesians.

And they explicitly reject Western values. In every country, at least 65% and up to 76% of respondents said they agreed strongly or somewhat with the Al Qaeda goals of keeping Western values out of Islamic countries, standing up to America and affirming the dignity of the Islamic people, requiring strict sharia law in every Islamic country, and even unifying all Islamic countries under a single Caliphate.

In light of this sweeping repudiation of every principle most Americans hold near and dear, let’s consider the response of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. It will shock you as much as learning that they’re gambling in Casablanca to hear that while there’s a consensus that we have a problem, there’s ideological gridlock when it comes to changing any policies.

Within days of 9/11, the U.S. right argued that “Why do they hate us” was the wrong question, the product of American naïveté and liberal self-hatred. President Bush’s simplistic answer, “They hate us for our freedoms,” was widely ridiculed. But conservatives have since been making a more compelling case for why Americans must become more tough-skinned about how they are viewed by their enemies. Since anti-Americans, including Al Qaeda, will by definition and existential necessity always hate us, why waste time trying to appease them? Sure, we’d be less hated if we agreed that Israel should be wiped off the face of the map, they say, but U.S. national interests trump popularity contests conducted among our natural enemies.

The left, on the other hand, argues that globalization makes it impossible to divorce U.S. national security from the good or ill will of others. Whether those others may be countries, terrorists, big investors or even well-organized consumer, political or religious movements, in a economically interdependent, more democratic (small d), more wired world, they count. And the U.S. can’t fight terrorism, nuclear proliferation, global warming or any other serious threats alone. Not only must we care what the Islamic world thinks of us, the left argues, rising anti-Americanism in many parts of the world is a national security threat.

The best case for the right’s argument is Saudi Arabia. One of Osama bin Laden’s biggest talking points—and one widely shared by other Muslims—was the need to evict the U.S. crusaders from the land of Mecca and Medina. The U.S. pulled its bases out of Saudi Arabia in 2003 but has yet to get a thank-you note from bin Laden.

The problem is, the conflagration in Iraq and a U.S. military presence in its fourth year has so inflamed the Arab world that it’s hard to know whether there might, under other circumstances, have been an improvement in relations after the pullout.

Why does all this matter? Because it’s at the ideological heart of the debate over how much longer the U.S. ought to be keeping its troops in Iraq, the subject of this week’s symbolic showdown between President Bush and Congress. There are two compelling arguments for staying in Iraq: to fulfill our moral and legal obligation to prevent genocide, in the form of ethnic cleansing by Shiites of Sunnis and unspeakable retaliation funded by Iraq’s Sunni neighbors; and to prevent Iraq’s becoming an al Qaeda beachhead.

But MIT’s Barry Posen makes a must-read case this week that the risk and other hideous outcomes have been overrated.

No matter what you believe, the political reality is that most U.S. forces will sooner or later leave Iraq, and probably sooner. The question is, what kind of a climate for Al Qaeda will they leave behind in the Muslim world at large? What happens even if we get lucky and win the battle to stabilize this Iraqi government? Do we still lose the bigger battle against Islamist fanaticism? The data suggest we already have.

Sonni Efron is a member of The Times’ editorial board.