"Victimhood is more appealing than self-responsibility"

I just finished reading this article on Salon about "America the scapegoat", and I'm trying to understand why many people in the world feel the way they do about the US. Let me preface this by saying that the author was from Australia and was very supportive of the US.

Why is it that there are many people in the world who feel we had the WTC bombing coming, let alone deserved it? How can they think such a thing? Is it because of their perceptions that we have things so much better over here, that we are an arrogant group of people?

Get over it already. You criticize us for acting too much, and then you criticize us for acting too little. It's easy to lay the blame at our feet, we're those damn Americans. All we care about is oil and money, right? It's a wonder that we don't become isolationists here, it would be easy to do. Close our boarders, kick everyone out and concentrate on what is going on at home.

And yet, to do something like that would go against everything that America stands for. We are a country of misfits. There are so many different cultures here, you would wonder how we have managed to stay together for so long, and yet, we have. Oh, we bicker amongst ourselves like any family would, but when you threaten us, we protect our own.

Perhaps there is a lot of self absorption in our country. Can you blame us? We work hard, we play hard, we do the best that we can to be successful so that we can raise our children to have the things we didn't have when we were growing up. Sometimes, it's all we can do to get by. One of the points in the article was that Americans overlook other countries. Perhaps this is the case with some people, but not all. Part of it stems from the fact that when your news media constantly focuses on what is going on within your own boarders as opposed to outside them, it's hard to look beyond them. I can tell you that I would love to be able to travel outside the US... to visit Australia, Ireland, England, Spain, etc. Goes back to the "getting by" comment I made earlier... I'd love to go, and I know others would as well, but who can afford it?

When there is vast amounts of ocean between you and the rest of the world, it's easy to sit back and feel safe. It's easy to focus on what is going on inside your own boundaries and not pay as much attention to what is going on outside them. The events of September 11 changed all that. It was a wake up call to the American people. To some of you, we reacted predictably by retaliating, yet what would you have us do? If your family had been in the WTC or on one of the planes, what would you do?

Terrorism has to stop. Do I think that the US routing out the Taliban and bin Laden will make it end? Not hardly. It's always going to be there, someone will always be willing to die for their cause. Do I think that if it had been another country, the results would have been different? No. Perhaps I am naive, but I'd like to think that if any other country had this happen to them, they would have reacted in the same way, and we would be there to help because that is the way we are.