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They had it coming?

September 15 | Globe and Mail | By MARGARET WENTE.

"The Americans are reaping the fruits of their crimes against humanity."

That's Saddam Hussein speaking. But you don't have to go to Baghdad to hear such views. Just hang around any college campus. Or chat with your well-heeled neighbours in downtown Toronto. Anti-American sentiment is nearly as popular among Canadians -- especially well-heeled ones -- as Starbucks lattes.

You'd think anti-Americanism would have gone discreetly underground this week. Not so. My inbox is crammed with e-mail such as the following: "The values that I venerate as a Canadian are not the same as those values venerated by Americans. Where is your indignation when NATO bombs Iraq or when the CIA perpetrates deathly intrigues worldwide every day?"

The anti-Americans, of course, don't believe that the thousands of innocent people who were blown to smithereens deserved to die. They're as horrified as anyone at the carnage. But they also believe the United States was asking for it.

One first-year student at a leading university described her political science class this week. "Everyone was saying it's a terrible thing, but America brought it on itself because it's against the other countries," she said. "The whole attitude was: America sucks." There was no other point of view expressed. The professor didn't bother to suggest there might be one.

At first, I thought these rants against America were confined to the usual anti-globalization crowd. But here's a sampling of opinion culled from lawyers, managers, teachers and various other people in Toronto:

"Isn't this really a symbol for people's discontent all over the world?"

"Well, what do they expect? They've been messing about in everyone's business. The only thing that's shocking is that it took so long."

"What goes around comes around. It's hubris."

I don't think these views represent the majority of Canadians. Certainly, the cafeteria lady, the liquor-store clerk and the guy who fixes my plumbing don't blame the victim. They're outraged. Their attitude is: "Terrorism must be stopped, so that this never happens again." They think that the United States must strike back and that Canada ought to help them.

But what do they know? Among the more sophisticated set, people say, "They should have known this was coming," and "Retaliation will make it worse." I heard well-meaning people phone in to CBC talk shows to ask just what it was America did, anyway, because they weren't exactly sure. I heard other well-meaning people describe the attack as an act of "misdirected anger," as if the suicide hijackers had been badly informed, and if only someone had sat down and explained things properly to them, they would have changed their minds.

It hadn't occurred to them that there are some people in the world who hate us and want us dead because they believe Western civilization is profoundly corrupt.

The bill of indictment against the United States is both very vague and very specific. Some people blame the gap between rich and poor, which the U.S. is either inadvertently or advertently responsible for creating. The feeling is that the poor are so desperate, so hopeless and so oppressed that it's not surprising they would lash out like this.

Other people blame the long record of alleged U.S. atrocities abroad, including its efforts to overthrow Fidel Castro, the war in Vietnam, the secret war in Cambodia, its support for various strongmen and dictators, the Persian Gulf war, the oppression of Palestinians, the deliberate starvation of Iraqi children etc. etc. They also like to argue that the CIA trained and backed Osama bin Laden in the first place, so it serves them right. (History professor John Kirton, at the University of Toronto, says the links weren't close, but a popular theory circulating on the Internet says the CIA really did it.)

Most kids have not mastered the bill of indictment in very much detail. Nonetheless, they know for a fact that America sucks, and that George W. Bush really sucks. "The kids in my school won't stop talking about how they hate the U.S.," says a young woman I know. Her Grade 12 classmates are multicultural children of the intelligentsia. "They think it's intellectually sophisticated. It means, 'I'm cynical, I'm hard.' "

Her generation has embraced anti-racism and multiculturalism. They believe in tolerance and respect for difference. But they have not been taught to believe that some values are better than others. "Sometimes, I'd like to ask them what would happen if a country like Afghanistan had the power the U.S. has," she says. "But you can't bring that up because it's perceived as racist."

Among these kids, reflexive anti-Americanism is as much a fashion statement as the jeans they wear. Their teachers haven't challenged their beliefs. Their parents haven't, either. Chances are their teachers and their parents think George Bush sucks, too. They've all been raised in a country where recreational bitching at the United States is just as much fun as going to Disney World. And they've never learned how much their lives depend on the liberal democratic values our nations share.

It's not just Muslims who are afraid of being stigmatized by mindless prejudice. So is any kid who's not entirely sure that George Bush sucks. "My American friend who's a student here has been crying all week long," says the first-year student at the first-rate university. "That's all she's heard."

It probably wouldn't do any good for these girls to remind their friends that Saddam Hussein is a warmonger who attacked four countries before the Americans moved against him, or that he's a mass murderer who did not hesitate to gas his own women and children, or that he was a hair away from being able to make a nuclear bomb and chemical weapons, which he would have been most happy to use on all the rest of us. It wouldn't help them to point out that the United States imposed a virtuous peace after the Second World War, and converted Germany and Japan into robust democracies. Or that Canada is full of countless Afghans and Pakistanis and Muslims from many nations who are here because they want what we have, not what they had in the lands they left behind.

It probably wouldn't do any good for them to remind their friends that the people who perished in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were doing work that makes it possible to go shopping at the Gap whenever we want, with money in our pockets and without fear for our personal safety. Work that makes it possible to express any political belief you want and not get locked up.

They're just kids, of course, so I guess you can forgive them for their ignorant prejudice against America. But the grownups -- the many, many grownups -- should know better.