In 1989, I left for Bangkok to taste the nectar of press freedom at least once in my life. If anyone had foretold that I would return home four years later with a family of my own, I'd have burst into derisive hoots of laughter.

Well, the last laugh is on me.

I now have two children whose bloodlines reach into Europe and America, aside from Asia.

My mother-in-law is pure Lebanese but was born in the US; her husband was of German descendent, whose grandfather - as a new emigrant - fought in the American civil war on the union side.

It's not surprising therefore that most current headline grabbing world news is of absorbing interest to us.

I've been three times to my wife's hometown of Yakima in mid-Washington state. The town of 80,000-odd souls is located in the valley of the same name whose output is mainly agricultural produce.

My third and last trip to the US was in 2001, the year that changed the world and which, last year, led to the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq and the continued bloody bungling attempts to pacify that country.

We were there in late June and returned by early July, so didn't get to experience first hand the reaction of the average American to the Sept 11 attacks.

However, the way events have unfolded, I've given up hope of ever visiting my in-laws again. I mean, who in his right mind would look forward to being stripped searched at the Seattle immigration detention centre, before being unceremoniously shipped back to the port of origin?

'No interest'

It was educational getting acquainted with a tiny parcel of the planet's sole superpower. But I must confess that restlessness would set in after the first week of the usually fortnight's stay.

Don't get me wrong; my in-laws are lovely people, warm in their hospitality but

Yakima itself is a laid back place; a smile accompanied by a cheery greeting is part of their lifestyle which easily accepted total strangers.

The atmosphere so gentle and unhurried and the air so clean and cool that one cannot resist the feeling that nothing could possibly go wrong with the world.

A string of visitors, including family members would drop in at the 19th century barn-like two-storey home to renew acquaintance with the prodigal daughter who has chosen to settle down in a faraway exotic land.

After a round of handshakes and how-do-you-do's, I would be left outside the circle of conversation as it hopped and skipped from one topic to another of completely local interest like lawn mowing and comparison of prices at the hypermarkets, sprinkled with gossip.

As my miffed wife observed, not once did they show any interest in me or my country. She has soaked in more of the outside world than most in her hometown, clocking six years in Thailand and 10 in this country, so her perception of global events is vastly different from that of most of her relatives and friends.

Womb-like universe

BBC's Tim Sebastian of Hardtalk fame once aptly described Americans as generally being "intellectually uncurious". That's middle-America for you; the most splendid example of which is the White House's current occupant.

TV programmes are very much localised affairs except for a few national channels that the two local stations network with. Foreign news for them, means mostly European news unless something hugely bad happens in other parts of the world.

In a nutshell, theirs is a very self-contained warm womb-like little universe and, they are quite at ease with themselves as typified by my mother-in-law's remark which she repeated at every visit: "I love my country, I'm proud of my country."

World affairs, it would seem, are strictly the government's business.

A few months after the military offensive on Iraq ended, Iraqis started hitting back at the occupiers. At the time, my sister had accompanied my missus on her near annual pilgrimage home.

The atmosphere had changed rather dramatically. When both related to her mother what they had seen on the various television channels available here, she apparently said: "I don't want to hear anymore about it."

One of her brothers chipped in: "They've got their freedom, what more do they want?"

Separation from the world

So a study that decried 'America's ignorance of the outside world' did not come as a surprise. The real surprise is that it has taken them so long to find what - for an eternity - has been an open secret for the rest of the world.

The study was reportedly conducted by a task force comprising prominent US politicians and educators, who reasoned that Americans' reluctance to study foreign civilisations could eventually become a national threat.

That threat had already manifested itself in the Sept 11 tragedy; unleashing a paranoia that appears to be growing by the day.

The study pointed out that the gap separating Americans from the rest of the world was particularly evident on that momentous day when most Americans were forced to ask themselves the anguished and confused questions: "Where did this come from?" and "How could anyone want to do this to us?"

CNN anchor Jim Clancy's "we are the good guys" remark shortly after the devastating attacks showed how deeply ingrained that self image is, as well as how deeply America has buried the dark side of its own history.

Just one example would suffice to back that assertion. I read 'Bury my heart at Wounded Knee' by Dee Brown in the 1970s and, till today, find myself unable to revisit that book. It was that painful.

The Great White Father in Washington broke every treaty signed with native Americans and hounded them out of their land, slaughtering men, women and children mercilessly to make way for the expansion of the great white hordes pouring in from Europe. They still have contempt for international law whenever it frustrates their ambitions.

Concrete measures

Returning to the topic at hand, AFP reported recently that members of a Strategic Task Force on Education Abroad had agreed that Americans are largely ignorant about the Middle East and suffer from a "pervasive lack of knowledge" of the world at large.

Only a handful of students venture abroad for their studies and, of them, almost half choose European countries - not emerging nations like China, India or those in the Arab world.

One of the telling parts of the study talked of the necessity of US military personnel, diplomatic corps and business executives being able to speak a whole range of world languages, instead of just English.

"To successfully navigate the new millennium, we will need leaders who are able to understand global crises not only from an American vantage point, but also from those of our allies and adversaries," it said.

They recommended that colleges and universities adopt a policy by 2010 making it mandatory for 20% of US students to have studied abroad. This should be raised to 50% by 2040.

The sad part of this whole exercise is that it appears to be a knee jerk by-product of Sept 9 when the task force was tasked with job to question Americans' ability to grasp the meaning of world events since that traumatic day; not out of their own desire for greater understanding of the world. It reminds one of the adage on the horse and the water trough.

Even sadder is the doubt that this study could result in concrete measures to light up enough dark areas in the American psyche to save the world from the great load of grief that still lies ahead.

Such heavy damage has been done to international relations and the world order that the repair works, even if they do come, might prove to be too late.

My sympathies lie with my in-laws as they are torn by their Arab blood on one side and patriotism on the other. That's truly a wretched place to be in.