In yet another Middle East conference complete with sweetly prepaid first-class tickets and sumptuous satin bedsheets at Qatar's hotels, the critics came flocking, outdoing one another in the "Blame America" game.

This latest feast was hosted by the very rich emir of Qatar, who is also the proprietor of the jihadist Al-Jazeera TV network, which specializes in vilifying America — 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The event was held in the best time of the year — spring is in full swing in Qatar, the Persian Gulf waters are shimmering, and the five-star hotels are throwing their doors open to welcome the experts on America's "double standards."

Only the best and brightest of the third tier of professional conference attendees were invited.

The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, by own his admission a regular at such occasions, reported from the front lines on how dire America's position appears to be.

"It's not just Iraq but the whole pattern of America's dealings with the Arab world," he wrote in yesterday's Post. "People aren't just angry at America — they've been that way to varying degrees since I first came here 27 years ago. What's worse is that they're giving up on us."

My, oh my, what are we to do? The Arabs giving up on us means we have to navigate global perils without their money and advice.

This latest get-together in Doha is the umpteenth conference lamenting the American condition, as is evident from the Web sites crowded with listings of Qatar events, so many that you would think the tiny population of Qatar — less than 200,000 — has nothing better to do than to shuttle visitors back and forth from airports amid oil flares.

Alas, as with other so-called conferences, the usual suspects were all there, saying pretty much what they said before. I could recite their names from a list affixed to my fridge: the Palestinian Daily Star's "permanent mourner" of Palestine, Rami Khouri; the "permanently angry" Islamist preacher of Al-Jazeera, Sheik Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, famed for his fatwas authorizing the killing of American soldiers in Iraq; the folks of the Zogby International polling group, who keep measuring how unpopular Americans are among Arabs and Muslims in the same short list of countries, and, last but not least, Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland, who is a fellow of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. Presumably, the latter was there to lend some air of respectability to this rumble on the beach.

It is not too difficult to figure out the formula behind everyone's motives.

Qatar is a tiny island state that lives in perpetual fear of its mammoth neighbors Saudi Arabia and Iran. Thus, as part of the Qatari self-protection scheme, it sponsors Al-Jazeera but also is home to the largest of America's air bases in the Gulf and throws a new conference every minute.

As for the Saban Center, like most think tanks, it will take its money where it can find it, and if some naïve Arabs wish to borrow its reputation in exchange for some cash, its attitude is, "What's the harm?"

Professional attendees at the Doha conference, such as Mr. Khouri, who has only one "Blame America" speech to make, are too happy to attend, collect their fees, and spend a few days in the sun.

The Zogby International polling group is only too happy to get even more contracts from Arabs in order to tell them what they want to hear. It keeps recycling the same poll of those "six countries that are usually regarded as pro-American: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates." Its fearless researchers braving crowds in the streets found out that only 12% of those surveyed in the "friendly" countries expressed favorable attitudes toward America and President Bush. If you get paid for saying that America is unpopular, why not keep repeating it?

We even know that some Op-Ed writers need to travel far and wide, filing from exotic datelines to appear as if they are reporting something worthwhile — and all the while, they are talking to important people like Mr. Khouri and braving the hazards of sunburn on the beach.

A high school student could have set up a more informative conference than this umpteenth lament in Doha.

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