The Great American Unpopularity

"The Great American Unpopularity" is the title of a short essay written by Mubashir Hasan, a former finance minister of Pakistan. Here is an excerpt.

Think of an unpopular and corrupt administration in a Third World country, unabashedly violating human rights, and you find the United States patronizing it. Think of a government with a strong anti-American posture and you find the masses rallying behind it....

The great pity of it is that the people of American as individuals and in small groups are as fair and decent as they ever were. They are better educated and better able to articulate the higher values of humankind than their preceding generations.

During the last four decades they made perceptible progress in their country towards integration of black people, extending social security systems, securing extension of rights for women.... They have perhaps the freest press in the world...yet for a large part of the world the freedom of Americans in America spells misery and oppression and poverty.

In the first line quoted, Mr. Hasan was speaking of his own country. Pakistan has been a military dictatorship or an unelected quasi-civilian government for most of its history. Mr. Hasan wrote in 1982. 28 years later only the names and faces of the rulers have changed. That is one reason why the free countries of the world have been slow to offer flood relief.

Mr. Hasan's essay was quoted by Richard Reeves in "How We Pick Our Friends", Chapter 14 of Passage to Peshawar, 1984, New York, Simon and Schuster.