ok, I couldn't find this article online, but it's in the April issue of Reader's Digest. It was written by Fouad Ajami, director of Middle East sudies at The School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He's an American citizen born in Lebanon, and he is widely considered an expert on the middle east. Here's some of the article.
On Egypt:
"There is a truth about Egypt that is hard for Americans to hear. Many in this ancient land hate us. Deeply.
On it's face, this defies reason. Here, modern Islam has fashioned the most accomplished society within the Arab world. Cairo, Egypt's capital, is a geniunely cosmopolitan city. For two centuries, this state has been on a Sisyphean quest for modernity, and along the way it has become the pillar of Western influence in Araby.
But Egypt has also been home to the oldest and most tenacious movement within radical Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a nation that gave birth to some of the most zealous of Al Qaeda's leaders. Of the 22 men on the FBI's most wanted list following Sept. 11th, seven were Egyptians. It was Egypt that dispatched Sheik Omar Abdulrahman, the preacher whose sermons imspired the truck bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. And it was a son of Eygpt's middle class, Mohammed Atta, that piloted the jet that crashed into the North Tower.
All this surprises us because we think of Egypt as a partner and friend. From Richard Nixon to George W. Bush, we have given this Arab country the support and indulgence it needed - including $50 billion in foreign aid over the last quarter century. The reason is simple: Egypt, with it's vast resources of peasant soldiers, offers the most serious challenge to Israel. Without Egypt, there can be no full scale Arab-Israeli war. So we've worked hard to pull this nation within our sphere of influence.
Deep down, however, American statesmen knew the limits of this game. Egypt could never be turned into a reliable partner. The anti-Westernism first stoked there by British colonialism has simply shifted on to the United States.
There is something more to the anti-Americanism. To hear Egypt's rulers, the visable hatred of Americans is caused by U.S. support for Israel. Don't believe it. It is motivated by envy. Anti-Americanism is a convenient excuse for the economic and political failures of this bitter land".