Over the last few weeks, I have received scores of e-mails from American readers of this column, asking me to explain why their country is so hated in much of the Muslim world.

I have tried to answer them by pointing out the dichotomy between the innate decency of most Americans and the amoral, short-sighted foreign policy so often followed by their governments in the pursuit of narrow interests. True, international politics have little room for morality and decency: the old adage "might is right" is still the name of the game. Despite the proliferation of international treaties and organizations, the law of the jungle still prevails.

We all like to think that the behaviour of nation-states has become more civilized in the last five decades, but the reality is very different. If we survey the globe, we find conflagrations everywhere. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the official end of the cold war, we deluded ourselves into thinking that without the rivalry between the two superpowers, the world would be a safer place. That brief glimpse of a 'peace dividend' evaporated when that regional thug, Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait and precipitated the Gulf War.

Briefly, there was talk of a 'New World Order' where there would be peace imposed by the United Nations backed up by the sole superpower. But all too soon, the contradiction in selectively enforcing Security Council resolutions surfaced; people began asking why Iraq-specific resolutions should be so enthusiastically and forcefully applied when those relating to other conflicts like Palestine and Kashmir could be so blatantly ignored. We now have a situation where the UN is relevant only to the extent it suits the United States: the current bombing of Afghanistan has no UN sanction. Indeed, the entire operation has no basis in international law.

But Washington has never been deterred by such mundane considerations: it has blithely attacked tiny countries like Panama and Grenada, mined harbours, backed terrorist groups against legitimate governments, sanctioned assassinations of leaders, toppled regimes, all in the name of self-interest. To be fair, it must be noted that the United States has also given billions as aid and loans, albeit in the same self-interest. However, over the years, successive American governments and the media have convinced the public that they are the good guys, and their country stands for law and morality the world over.

So when the bloody attacks of September 11 took place, ordinary Americans were not only horrified by the carnage, but bewildered by the intensity of the hatred these incidents revealed. This is the first time in decades that they began looking inward, and asking why so many terrorists were willing to kill themselves in order to inflict death and destruction on such an unimaginable scale. Although their leaders and much of the media have tried to present the conflict in simplistic, black-and-white terms, many concerned Americans are trying to grapple with the causes of these attacks and come to terms with the underlying issues.

They understand that unless they do so, they will remain at risk and the world will be a dangerous place, even (or specially) for the sole superpowers.

Americans are justly proud of their freedom of expression, and look to their media to learn about the world. However, let me reproduce a few lines from the preface of the ground-breaking book "Manufacturing Consent: the political economy of the mass media" by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky:

"...the democratic postulate is that the media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the truth, and that they do not merely reflect the world as powerful groups wish it to be perceived. Leaders of the media claim that their news choices rest on unbiased professional and objective criteria, and they have support for this contention in the intellectual community. If, however, the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, to decide what the general populace is allowed to see, hear and think about, and to 'manage' public opinion by regular propaganda campaigns, the standard view of how the system works is at serious odds with reality."

The authors develop their thesis by cataloguing the linkages between the business groups that control media conglomerates, the government and academia. Chomsky and Herman argue: "To consolidate their pre-eminent position as sources, government and business promoters go to great pains to make things easy for news organizations...

In effect, the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access by their contribution to reducing the media's costs... The media may feel obligated to carry extremely dubious stories and mute criticism in order not to offend their sources and disturb a close relationship...."

Although this book appeared in 1988, it was graphically illustrated for me during the Gulf War as I was in Washington at the beginning of that conflict. As I scanned channel after channel for some dissenting view, I was shocked by the uniformity of opinions being expressed by platoons of so-called experts. The endless panel discussions merely offered variations on a theme, and that theme was that war was inevitable, and even desirable. No independent voices were given time or space by either the mainstream electronic or print media. And once the bombing began, retired generals and so-called analysts began falling over themselves in hailing the American armed forces. It was obvious that if any of them strayed from the script, he would not be invited back.

This "manufactured consent" made it easy for the elder Bush to completely crush Iraq while muting any moral qualms about the slaughter of an estimated two hundred thousand helpless Iraqis. There was no opposition because there was no debate. And there was no debate because the media was in bed with the administration. Fast forward to the 'war against terrorism' currently being waged in Afghanistan: hardly any mainstream voice is questioning the campaign and the inevitable civilian casualties it is causing in an already devastated nation.

As a matter of policy, respected independent figures like Chomsky himself are denied access to TV talk shows and the op-ed pages of The New York Times and the Washington Post. Instead, they call on the services of people who will toe the line and not question the broad policy, specially in foreign affairs. And since readers and viewers have been conditioned to accept them as objective experts, they take what they say as gospel.

Thus, after years of being told that their policies abroad are righteous and benign, the turmoil in the minds of ordinary Americans is perfectly understandable. However, now that they have begun the difficult process of looking beneath the surface, they will discover that there are other realities and other truths than the ones they have been spoon-fed all these years.