CAIRO, Feb. 25 -- With the bitterness of betrayal, Said Naggar looks out at a region on the brink of war and sees the wreckage of ideals he cherished and principles he proclaimed.

The United States wants to partition Iraq, he argues in slow, deliberate tones, and covets the world's second-largest oil reserves. An invasion, he says, serves only Israel and a clique within the Bush administration "whose ignorance is matched only by their greed." A preemptive war, whose very premise he believes defies international law, signals the rebirth of colonialism and imperialism that seemed finished generations ago.

"I feel we have been deceived about the nature and character of the United States of America," he said.

Remarkably, these are the words of a friend. Naggar is a World Bank veteran who quotes the Declaration of Independence and whose son is a U.S. citizen. His library is stocked with works of Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and "all the great founders." He lived for 17 years in Washington, where he says he never felt like a foreigner, and still longs for the city's intellectual and artistic life and his favorite Asian restaurants.

In 1991, he founded a group called the New Civic Forum "to promote the ideas and ideals of the United States of America." Today, the very thought gives rise to a long, boisterous laugh.

"I still believe in these values," he said, wiping his eyes, "but I don't call them American ideals anymore."

A generation of Arabs wooed by the United States and persuaded by its principles has become among the most vociferous critics of America's world view. Within its ranks are affluent businessmen with ties to the West, U.S.-educated intellectuals and liberal activists. Their ire is directed not at U.S. culture, but at preparations for a war that they believe has left them voiceless, discredited and isolated in a landscape almost universally opposed to U.S. policy.

To them, the Bush administration's talk of a more democratic Arab world is rendered hollow by its policy toward the Palestinians and Iraq. They see their desire for more secular, progressive societies overwhelmed by growing radicalism and religious fervor, a tide so pronounced that it has caught even mainstream Islamic activists off guard. In sentimental tones, they lament the end of an era in which the United States appeared as a beacon.

"As far as I am concerned, this is going to be the first American-Arab war," said Mohamed Kamal, a professor at Cairo University. "If it ends with an American presence in Iraq, people have one description for this -- this is occupation, this is an American occupation of Arab land. America never had a colonial legacy in this part of the world, but it is about to have one."

The shift among the Arab ruling and intellectual classes who identified with the West is a telling barometer in the Arab world. Anger at the United States appears greater than at any time since the 1967 Middle East war, greater even than during the headiest days of the 1950s, when Gamal Abdel Nasser ruled Egypt and made anti-imperialism a staple of his still-celebrated speeches. The fate of Iraqis and, to a greater degree, that of Palestinians have become pressing domestic issues.

The broad anger is evident in many ways: attacks on Americans and other Westerners in the Persian Gulf region, chants at protests that denounce "American terrorism" in the same breath as "Israeli aggression," and ongoing efforts to boycott McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Pizza Hut and other U.S. products. There are also more subtle signs. Well-to-do Jordanians are said to spurn invitations to dinners attended by Americans. Cairo taxi drivers occasionally decline to pick up foreigners in expatriate enclaves. In a culture that celebrates a tradition of hospitality, some even refuse to offer the almost requisite coffee or tea to an American visitor.

Among Egypt's wealthy, a group long disposed toward America, there has been a resurgence of religious piety that some see as a repudiation of the West and a visceral reclamation of identity. Amr Khaled, an accountant turned preacher, recently created a sensation by ministering to Cairo's wealthy with a television-evangelist style that contrasted with the robed, fire-and-brimstone preachers who long dominated religious sermons.

"The upper class used to be extremely loyal to the American ideal. It always saw the United States as the incarnation of its own ideals," said Mohamed Sayed Said, deputy director of Cairo's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. "Now they share the same negative view of the United States, that it targets Arabs and Muslims. That's the new element."

For conservative Islamic activists, suspicion of the West has long extended beyond specific U.S. foreign policy to include the perceived lax morality of American popular culture and the overarching military, economic and political power that the United States represents. Their views are often expressed as a kind of Islamic triumphalism, a supremacist ideology familiar in the rhetoric of Osama bin Laden.

But Naggar, Said and others said their disenchantment springs not from a fear of American power, but from a sense of betrayal of ideals. Despite their opposition to U.S. support for Israel, they point to the United States' lack of a colonial past and respect its democratic traditions. Egyptians still celebrate President Dwight D. Eisenhower's demand that the Israelis, British and French withdraw from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in the 1956 war. Arabs recall admiringly the decision in 1957 of a young senator, John F. Kennedy, to side with Algeria in its war for independence from France.

Many younger, urban Arabs continue to find a place in their lives for American culture. In Lebanon, once ruled by the French, American-accented English has come to dominate. Hollywood movies remain popular. Sitting at McDonald's in Amman's ritzy Abdoun neighborhood over Cokes and a basket of half-eaten French fries, young Jordanians rattle off their favorite musicians -- Eminem, Dr. Dre and Tupac Shakur.

But powerful and once sympathetic voices have turned decisively against U.S. policy. Reda Hilal, a columnist for Egypt's leading newspaper, the English-language Al-Ahram Weekly, was once a stalwart defender of U.S.-Arab ties. He now talks of America's arrogance of power. Hani Shukrallah, managing editor of the Al-Ahram Weekly, recalled a dinner last week in which leading Egyptian businessmen involved in joint ventures with Israeli companies and exports to the United States "were speaking like leftist university students."

When an American landed on the moon in 1969, "we thought he was one of us," reminisced Mustafa Hamarneh, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. Now, he argued, not even the most pro-American elements of Jordanian society believe the United States is sincere in its talk of freedom and democracy for the Arab world.

With a war, he said, "it will be almost impossible for people to be in open alliance with America on issues in the future."

Losing the Benefit of the Doubt

Kamal, the Cairo University professor, earned his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 2001, lived in Dupont Circle and worked as a congressional fellow in the House of Representatives, but he said he is at a loss to explain U.S. policy to the 200 students in his international relations class.

"We're not talking about defending American actions, just explaining them," said Kamal, 36. "You feel you're on the defensive. You don't know what to say. It's like the cup is totally empty. Not half-empty and half-full, and you can explain the full part. It's totally empty when it comes to Iraq and Palestine. It's difficult to give the Americans the benefit of the doubt."

For weeks, Kamal said, he has labored to put together a model U.S. Congress, in which students would simulate the workings of the Foreign Relations, Finance and Armed Services committees. Its slogan: "Experience U.S. politics and its influence over our world." But he said a war will likely force him to cancel it.

"What's next, the Israeli Knesset?" Kamal recalled one university official asking him.

"This is what really worries me," he said. "Emotions have overwhelmed rationality in dealing with the United States."

Concern that anti-American sentiment will overwhelm the region is shared, perhaps ironically, by mainstream Islamic groups that risk losing ground to a more radical younger guard.

In Egypt and Jordan, the mainstream is represented by the Muslim Brotherhood, whose leaders -- some with years of jail time on their résumés -- remain the most credible opposition figures and targets of often fierce government repression. Having disavowed violence decades ago, the group dominates the professional unions that serve as the focus of still-feeble civil societies in both countries, and its widespread clinics, hospitals, pharmacies and schools often outperform shabby government alternatives.

Islamic leaders in Jordan fear the repercussions of a war in Iraq on a rank and file who are predominantly Palestinian and considered more militant. In an unusual Letter from the Youth published in the leading Arabic newspaper Al Hayat in April, the younger guard in Egypt questioned the movement's long-standing policy of not confronting a state that has tolerated few protests.

Fearful of the growing appeal of bin Laden as a symbol of defiance to the United States, mainstream Islamic scholars have even spoken out in recent weeks against transforming resentment of U.S. policy into a conflict between Islam and Christianity. Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a leading Shiite cleric in Lebanon, warned this month of a "wave of retardation and myth" rolling over the Arab world. Leading Islamic voices in Egypt took to the pages of prominent Arabic newspapers last week to denounce a clash of civilizations when millions protested in Europe and the United States against a war.

"It's very difficult for a moderate movement to maintain its moderation in a violent, repressive atmosphere," said Emad Eldin Shahin, an expert on Islamic movements at the American University in Cairo.

While some analysts see a broad return to piety across the Arab world as a response to the crisis, others predict gloomier scenarios of violence in the event of war. Officials are blunt in their assessment that the growing resignation of Arab governments to a war has engendered deep-seated popular resentment over their seeming inability to stand up to the United States. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's support has diminished markedly over the past decade, but most expect the war to be portrayed as an aggression against a fellow Arab country, rather than a mission to depose him.

"The situation has become very scary. There's a real sense of doom," said Shukrallah, the editor at Al-Ahram Weekly. "What's interesting to me is that no one has any kind of scenario on how this disaster will unfold."

For Hamad Abdel-Aziz Kawari, a former Qatari ambassador to the United States, the disillusionment itself is enough.

Sitting in his seaside office in Doha underneath two pictures of former president George Bush, he boasted that his three children were graduates of George Washington University. He straddles two worlds, he said, having served eight years in the United States. But the American ideals he respects, he said, are overshadowed by the foreign policy he sees.

"You want to be friends. And to be friends you have to be convinced your friend is doing something good," he said.

"Believe me and write this," he added. "Nobody hates America. America used to be a great example, it was not a colonial power in the region. Our sons and brothers work with American businesses. I am very sorry that American policy is threatening the human relations between the nations. The Americans are antagonizing their friends."

Special correspondent Alia Ibrahim in Beirut contributed to this report.