What was even sillier was when neocon pundits and war hawks attempted to answer that supremely naive question. They hate us because they envy our ''freedom,'' we were told.

The first time I heard the question ''why do they hate us?'' I was reminded of an encounter with a Palestinian shopkeeper in the Old City of Jerusalem. He noticed me and another journalist looking for batteries.

''American?'' he asked. We both nodded our heads. ''Good people, bad government.''

I've been thinking about what he said ever since. What I've come to realize is that, on one hand, the shopkeeper was expressing his faith in the common decency of American people.

On the other, he was pointing to our collective tendency to fall for the rhetoric of our leaders in justifying morally indefensible policies and the fundamental disconnect between ordinary Americans' values and the decisions made by the leaders we elect.

This week's phrase: ''Economic hit man'' or EHM. ''Economic hit men are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, USAID, and other 'aid' organizations into coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources.

''Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know; I was an EHM.''

That's how John Perkins begins his book ''Confessions of an Economic Hit Man'' (2004).

Perkins, longtime chief economist for the international consulting firm of Chas. T. Main, details his apprenticeship and career as an EHM.

In chapter 7, ''Civilization on Trial,'' Perkins relates an eye-opening conversation he had with a group of young Muslims in Indonesia in the 1970s. He was advised to read the works of British historian Arnold Toynbee, who predicted in the 1950s that the real war of the next century wouldn't be between Communists and capitalists but between Christians and Muslims.

One young lady told Perkins that the Soviet Union at that time was the only thing standing in the way of an American empire. But the Soviets wouldn't last, she predicted, because ''they have no religion, no faith, no substance behind their ideology. History demonstrates that faith - a belief in higher powers - is essential.

''We Muslims have it. We have it more than anyone else in the world... So we wait. We grow strong. We will take our time and then like a snake we will strike.''

Perkins thought about it. ''We in the (developed countries) were the users of resources; those in the less developed countries were the suppliers. It was the colonial mercantile system all over again, set up to make it easy for those with power and limited natural resources to exploit those with resources but no power.

''I knew enough history to understand that suppliers who are exploited long enough will rebel. I only had to return to the American Revolution. I recalled that Britian justified its taxes by claiming that England was providing aid to the colonies in the form of military protection against the French and Indians. The colonists had a very different interpretation...History appeared to be repeating itself.''

Now ask yourself: Did you know there are thousands of EHMs working on behalf of rich westerners all over the globe? Neither did I. And that's why that Palestinian shopkeeper in Jerusalem said of America: ''good people, bad government.''

Question for us ''good people'' is: Are we going to allow EHMs to continue to put us in danger or are we going to look the other way and continue to ask ridiculous questions like ''why do they hate us?''

Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and syndicated columnist.

© 2005 Cape Cod Times

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