Why is America "so disliked?" it's due to foreign policy designed by beaurocracy and conflicting personalities.
America's relations are a schitzo with the Middle East.
Also you have the Western mindset which is often ignored, and the fact that though the leaders of the moderate Arab nations have the similar mindset due to American educations, the main in general populace does not. (this is due to belief systems for thousands of years which though a Westerner can comprehend the thought process, honestly cannot truly replicate; now I'm dreadfully over generalizing on this though)
Overall, the esteemed leadership has no idea on how to handle diplomacy over the lingual and cultural barriers which do not appear to exist.
Now onto the recent events, I've heard a few underinformed folks state that the US military and economy will be in shambles or having to recover due to this.
Our economy and military are decentralized, the pentagon and WTC were/are symbols of these facets but are not critical. (now many people have died, but it is barely a bruise on the blunt industro-militaristic base)
The problem is that our economy is based on consumer confidence, and this will shake it for a few weeks, causing some shakes with the market.
Overall it's a nuisance, innocents died, the economy has a bump due to money for remodeling and cleaning the wastes as well as building more security.
The country housing the terrorists is as good as dead. Now the US may not be "the supreme force" (it has many strengths over other armed forces in the world) but it's technology and the fact that the European Union and Israel are almost assuridley allies means that whatever country is responsible or connected is _dead_.
What this shows is that the standard eastern terrorist (if it is from them, it may was well be Greenpeace or six drunk dudes holding airplanes for all we know from the news reports I've seen) did not have enough foresight to notice that in the long run this will prevent further acts of jihad, as well as this will end their careers permenantly.
------------------
AceStaff member FreeSpace Watch
http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/ [This message has been edited by Ace (edited 09-11-2001).]