There are American flags waving all over the world and massive vigils almost everywhere from Ottawa and London to Berlin and Rome. Muslims, alongside Christians and Jews, are praying for dead and injured Americans and their families. Palestinians have held candlelight vigils. Taiwanese firefighters have honoured their fallen U.S. brethren. Kenyans have gathered to pay their tearful respects. Swedes have observed a moment of silence. The U.S. national anthem has been sung at events around the globe. Canadian Blood Services has been deluged with donors hoping to assist the rescue and medical efforts. And at a service last Friday at Toronto’s predominantly gay and left-leaning Metropolitan Community Church, the choir belted out several heartfelt verses of “God Bless America.” All in all, it’s a remarkably generous global outpouring of support for a country that up until nine days ago was almost uniformly considered a worldwide bully, an increasingly isolationist nation unwilling to co-operate in everything from environmental protocols and the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty to the enforcement of a ban on germ warfare. U.S. diplomacy has been so deficient lately that what’s surprising in the recent flood of news coverage and commentary about the terrorist attacks is not that there’s been some dissenting opinion blaming antagonistic U.S. foreign policy, but that there hasn’t been more. Instead, the U.S. has been the recipient of unprecedented global sympathy. And the support isn’t merely spiritual. For the first time in its history, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) used treaty language to proclaim the terrorist attacks on the U.S. an attack on all of NATO and it appears that European leaders are willing to offer military support to the U.S. in its fight against terrorism. On Tuesday, Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed to a ceasefire in the Middle East in the hope of assisting U.S. efforts to establish an international coalition against terrorism. In Asia, the U.S. has rekindled its relationship with Pakistan, after siding increasingly with India of late, Pakistan being one of the few nations with ties to and influence with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Even China, U.S. enemy Number One last March after it intercepted an American spy plane, seems willing to co-operate. “The U.S. horror demonstrated that terrorism knows no boundaries and evil won’t be wiped out unless all nations join together to fight it,” the Shanghai Co-operation Organization said. Still, much of America’s jingoism (wrapped up in patriotism) remains hard for the rest of the world to swallow, from the “Find ’em and nuke ’em” T-shirts that appeared only hours after the terrorist attacks, to racist assaults on Arab and Muslim Americans, to the football stadium spectacle of a New York crowd greeting President George W. Bush with upraised fists and chants of “U.S.A! U.S.A!” to Bush’s cowboy rhetoric of wanting Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.” So what happens next and afterward depends entirely on how much the American people and their government are willing to tone down their bloodthirstiness and recognize, respect and reflect the sympathy and assistance offered to them. Will the U.S. exploit global goodwill or use it wisely? In future, will U.S. citizens offer the same benevolence to others in Afghanistan or Iraq or Colombia or China as the rest of the world has shown them? As the Bush administration plans its response to the attack, will it take into account other nations’ interests or just its own? And afterward, when the U.S. is asked for its co-operation, will it remember the support it received during this crisis, or will Bush retreat to his isolationist stance? Take Pakistan. In return for its co-operation, it’s said to be seeking debt forgiveness, an easing of sanctions and possibly some support against India in the battle over Kashmir. The Pakistani government may well pay a price at the hands of its own people who oppose the U.S. government. Is the U.S. prepared to take responsibility for potentially destabilizing Pakistan, or for escalating the conflict between it and India? Or will it abandon the region once it has what it needs? As the global bully emerges from its self-imposed quarantine, it must begin to display some of the compassion and co-operation that it’s received from other nations and it must listen to their peaceful counsel. While it might be the American way to face adversity with a swagger, in this case it would be wiser and saner to be humbled by it.