Many people believe that the beauty of the US political system is its ability to correct itself. Things going astray will ultimately be put right they say.

Not really.

Looking back over the past decade, it is clear that if there ever was such a mechanism it is no longer working and there has been an absence of much needed self-criticism.

This was brought into sharp focus when protests against the United States erupted in Egypt and Libya last week, and the US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was killed. Anti-US demonstrations and riots have now spread across the Muslim world, triggered largely by the anti-Islam movie, Innocence of Muslims.

In the US, the blame has been put on a small group of Islamic extremists in the Middle East and those foreign governments which the US claims have not reacted forcefully to the situation.

US government officials, pundits and even the media keep repeating the same old mantra that the majority of the people in the Middle East and the Islamic world welcome Americans. The US media has frequently cited Christopher Stevens' words that "Americans, French and British are enjoying unusual popularity".

Such soothing words are nice, yet a survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that there was a great deal of anger at US policies and Americans in many Muslim nations.

While this may come as a shock to most Americans, it explains why there have been such strong and widespread anti-US protests since last week.

The US needs to take a good hard look at its foreign policy if it is to change such attitudes. For example, the US has long been seen in the Arab world as leaning toward Israel in the Mideast peace process.

Then there is the decade-long war on terror. Waged largely in the two Muslim nations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the war has alienated the Muslim world. On the contrary, a significant number of people in these places view al-Qaida and its ilk favorably. Many even believe that suicide attacks against Americans and other Westerners are justifiable.

Drone attacks have also sown seeds of hatred among Muslims, because while US leaders tout the number of terrorist chiefs and insurgents killed by the high-tech weaponry, these assassinations also cause collateral civilian deaths.

There is also much to be reckoned with the US support for the so-called "Arab Spring", which produced undesirable outcome even for the Americans. In countries such as Libya, sectarian violence is looming.

In Syria, reports suggest that al-Qaida elements have infiltrated the opposition forces. The US must think twice before it proclaims the leader of another nation "must go" and starts to support any opposition.

Republican challenger Mitt Romney and many neo-conservatives like to accuse US President Barack Obama of being too soft and weak in his foreign policy, but in fact he has been way too hawkish, betraying his early promises that his administration would seek talks and reconciliation with the US' adversaries.

Afraid of being labeled as weak, Obama has been eager to show how tough he is. He sent an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, stepped up drone attacks and poured huge resources to hunt down Osama bin Laden and eventually kill him.

US politicians like to claim that people attack the US and its policies because they hate freedom and democracy. But they are living in cloud-cuckoo-land. Such a simple mindset and unwillingness to take a look at what the US is doing is unlikely to help the US win friends in the Muslim world.

The author, based in New York, is deputy editor of China Daily USA. Email: [email protected]

(China Daily 09/22/2012 page5)