by Victor Davis Hanson

About the author: Victor Davis Hanson is a contributor to City Journal and National Journal and the author of An Autumn of War: What America Learned from September 11 and the War on Terrorism.

Since [the] September 11, 2001, [terrorist attacks on America] we have heard mostly slander and lies about the West from radical Islamic fundamentalists in their defense of the terrorists. But the Middle Eastern mainstream—diplomats, intellectuals, and journalists—has also bombarded the American public with an array of unflattering images and texts, suggesting that the extremists’ anti- Americanism may not be an eccentricity of the ignorant but rather a representative slice of the views of millions. For example, Egyptian Nobel Prize–winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz reportedly announced from his Cairo home that...