"In the wake of U.S. aid to help Muslim and other victims of the recent tsunami, Colin Powell suggested that maybe, now that the Muslim world has seen 'American generosity' and 'American values in action,' it wouldn't be so hostile to America.

"Don't hold your breath waiting for a thank-you card. If the fact that American soldiers have risked their lives to save the Muslims of Bosnia, the Muslims of Kuwait, the Muslims of Somalia, the Muslims of Afghanistan and the Muslims of Iraq has earned the U.S. only the false accusation of being 'anti-Muslim,' trust me, U.S. troops passing out bottled water and Pop-Tarts in Indonesia are not going to erase that lie. It is not an exaggeration to say that, if you throw in the Oslo peace process, U.S. foreign policy for the last 15 years has been dominated by an effort to save Muslims -- not from tsunamis, but from tyrannies, mostly their own theocratic or autocratic regimes."

Let me stop you right there, Tom, because the numerous fallacies you have perpetrated in the few lines above require several columns to refute. I was stunned by the outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell's statement, echoed by you, that American aid to the Muslim victims of the Tsunami would reap public relations bonanza for the U.S. in the Islamic world! In Islam we have a saying that, charity, followed by repeated reminders of charity by the giver to the given, cancels charity! Like you, President Bush was dismayed by the lack of expression of gratitude by the victims, forgetting that their only purpose in life now is to grieve and survive. As for the magnitude of U.S. charity, please refer to the TIME magazine of January 17. Whereas Australia has pledged $815 million, Germany $674 million and Japan $500 million in aid for the Tsunami victims, the world's largest economy, the U.S., has pledged $350 million! As a percentage of GDP, Australia's contribution is 47-times greater than the US's.

I know that the individual Americans are the most generous people on earth. It was not a surprise, therefore, to read a letter in The New York Times on January 10, criticising the Bush administration's stinginess: "I am unconvinced by the argument that the United States is generous with foreign aid once private giving is considered. Americans have a great and unique tradition of private philanthropy. But private giving simply pales in contrast with the resources of the federal government. We do not rely on the generosity of the private individuals for domestic disaster aid. Even though many Americans gave to relief funds when hurricanes struck Florida last year, President Bush signed a bill allocating $2 billion in initial disaster relief. Of course, the United States government has a greater obligation to its own citizens than those abroad. But the devastation in Asia is so many orders of magnitude greater than in Florida that it seems absurd to me that our government's $350 million commitment to Tsunami relief is anywhere near adequate, even when considering donations by the private sector." If the Tsunami victims could vote in the US presidential elections, Mr. Bush would probably have given them over $20 billion in U.S. aid!

Distraught after losing the presidential election of 1992 to Bill Clinton, the senior President Bush wanted to leave office in a blaze of glory, and initiated a clumsy and ill-defined humanitarian mission in Somalia, which unfortunately resulted in the death of several U.S. soldiers at the hands of the Somali warlords. The cynics say that Bush senior intervened in Somalia because he did not want to intervene in Bosnia. Do you know, Tom, that not a single U.S. soldier died as President Bill Clinton's America came to the rescue of Muslims in Bosnia and (you forgot to mention) Kosovo. Is it not amazing that when America's intentions were good, their casualties were nil? Critics also say that America waited too long to intervene in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the only reason they did was because the Bosnia-Kosovo ethnic cleansing, rape and murder of the Muslims were taking place in the heart of Europe under the full view of the world's print and electronic media, and America and Britain, which were bombing Saddam Hussein's Iraq every other day to enforce the "No-Fly Zone," would have lost all credibility if they had done everything against Saddam Hussein and nothing against Slobodan Milosevic. Nevertheless, President Bill Clinton is certainly not considered "anti-Muslim;" on the contrary, he is enormously popular and a hero in the Muslim world. One earns the respect of the Muslims through good deeds, Tom, not good propaganda.

Let us recapitulate the events that led to Gulf War I and the liberation of Kuwait. Angered by Iran's taking of the US diplomats as hostages in 1979, America encouraged Iraq to attack Iran in 1980. America and its allies supplied Iraq with funds and weapons, including chemical weapons with which Saddam gassed the Kurds, with the U.S. looking the other way. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were Iraq's main financiers. In 1990, flouting OPEC's quota, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates flooded the market, depressing the price of oil to below $11/barrel, making it impossible for Iraq to service its foreign debt. Sensing Iraq's vulnerability, Kuwait began pressuring Iraq to settle their border disputes and demanded the repayment of $12-14 billion Iraq had borrowed from Kuwait during the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam accused Kuwait of waging "a kind of war against Iraq."

On July 25, 1990, the US Ambassador to Iraq, Ms. April Glaspie, who is Jewish, met with Saddam and told him: "We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreements with Kuwait," which Saddam interpreted as a green light to attack Kuwait. Muslim nations joined the rest of the world to expel Saddam from Kuwait. What the naïve Muslim world did not realise is that the West had a hidden agenda -- destruction of Iraq, Israel's enemy. With crippling UN sanctions, and almost daily bombings, the West reduced prosperous Iraq into pauper Iraq. Most criminally, western-enacted UN sanctions killed at least one million Iraqi children, which the former U.S. Secretary of State Albright famously claimed was justified! Any Muslim gratitude for the liberation of Kuwait was obliterated by the sinister plot to destroy the Iraqi nation.

You have to explain to me, Tom, how "American soldiers risked their lives to save the Muslims of Afghanistan and the Muslims of Iraq." Granted, the Afghans and the Iraqis were under rotten regimes. But, as far as I remember, they did not want any foreign country to "save" them. You will be surprised to know, Tom, that there are people in the world who are not solely preoccupied with "running for office, studying anything they want or finding good jobs," as you state in your column. Even the western puppet, the United Nations Security Council, did not authorise the recent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. During one of his speeches opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Nobel Peace Prize winner South African Bishop Desmond Tutu said, even at the height of the white supremacist apartheid's oppression of the blacks, "we did not ask to west to bomb us into democracy!" That is exactly what is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq -- democracy is being imposed through bombing and killing, which so far has claimed the lives of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. If democracy is a panacea that cures all ills, Tom, why does it have to be imposed through such savagery?

Even Americans are getting tired of your promotion of the Iraq war, Tom. A letter in The New York Times on January 9 blasted you: "Thomas L. Friedman argues that our nation-building experiment in Iraq, though botched by the Bush administration, can still be justified because the success or failure of the planned elections will tell us whether "it is possible for the people of even one Arab state to voluntarily organise themselves around a social contract for democratic life." It will prove no such thing. If we fail to establish a democratic government in Iraq, it will not prove that an Arab Muslim democracy is impossible, but merely that the United States was unable forcibly to impose western-style democracy on a vast religiously and ethnically heterogeneous state, without significant international support or adequate troop commitment, at a time when the Arab on the street loathes and distrusts our regime. That hardly needed proving in the first place."

Another letter read: "Friedman supports the overthrow of the Iraqi government and the coming election as an experiment in democracy. This experiment has so far meant more than 1500 coalition forces and contractors dead, more than 10,000 injured, hundreds of thousands in an environment of brutality, tens of thousands of Iraqis dead and millions of Iraqis seriously affected. Mr. Friedman may feel that such experiments can be justified, but how many Iraqis would agree? How many Americans?"

Since you are so gung-ho about democracy, let us remind ourselves that the British democracy was quite content to colonise and brutalise India; the Indian democracy to this day denies the Kashmiris self-determination which they were promised; the American democracy attacked three sovereign nations that did not attack them -- Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq; and the Israeli democracy was founded on the expulsion of the native Palestinians, stealing of their lands and currently thrives on stealing more Palestinian lands and building settlements on those. According to Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery, Israeli democracy kills 5 to 7 Palestinian civilians every day, and when the Palestinians kills 5 to 7 Israelis one day, the Israeli democracy severs all links with the Palestinian Authority until the Palestinian (not Israeli) violence ends! Tom, I notice that in your columns you are now referring to the Iraqi insurgents as "fascists." If the Iraqis fighting occupation are "fascists," what are we to call Sharon's death squads: Nazis?

You mention the Oslo peace process. I remember very well how you tried to undermine it by warning Yitzhak Rabin in your column just before his assassination in November 1995 that by moving so fast he was jeopardising Israel's security. The problem with you, Tom, is that you want to fast forward to step number seven without addressing step one. You lecture the Iraqis why it is in their interest to participate in the US-sponsored election. You lecture the Palestinians that the crumbs Sharon throws at them are their best hope for survival. Palestinians and the Iraqis want to discuss what triggered their suffering. While you lecture them how they should bring up the illegitimate baby, they want to talk about the rape of Palestine and Iraq that resulted in the illegitimate babies! Only in nations that started World War II -- Japan and Germany -- democracy was imposed through defeat and occupation. When a democracy attacked another sovereign nation, such as Vietnam, democracy acquired such a bad reputation that the victim country preferred dictatorship. Because it is being imposed through bombings and bullets, American version of democracy is unlikely to take root in Afghanistan or Iraq.

As the winner of multiple Pulitzer prizes, you wield enormous clout in America, Tom. Those in power listens to you, as they do to the fraudulent Professor Emeritus of Princeton University, Bernard Lewis. Let me whisper a piece of free advice in your ear: Tom, you have a very poor comprehension of the Arabs, the Muslims and the Islamic world! If President Bush listens only to those like you, America will be in deeper trouble in the Islamic world than it is now. On the other hand, you can do America a great favour, Tom, by telling President Bush some truths: 1) Muslims are sick and tired of hearing about "freedom and democracy," which for them come packaged in Abu Ghraibs, bombs and deaths; 2) if America really wants to win over the Muslims, President Bush must talk about JUSTICE and SEE JUSTICE ENFORCED everywhere starting with Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya, and the U.S. troops must leave Afghanistan and Iraq as soon as possible. You will do it for America's sake, won't you, Tom?