“Oh, Mr. Howeidi, please stop blaming others,” Walid Sabaawi wrote this week on the Web site of the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.

Mr. Sabaawi was one of many who protested the latest in a series of articles by the Egyptian columnist Fahmy Howeidi that detailed Western, Christian, and Jewish conspiracies against Muslims, from the Palestinian Arab territories to Iraq.

“Can we please stop ducking responsibilities,” Mr. Sabaawi wrote. “The problems, first and last, are among us. Who is killing Iraqis in the streets of Baghdad? Who is killing Palestinians in the streets of Gaza and Algeria and Sudan and Somalia? Who is blowing up mosques in Pakistan, and residential complexes in Riyadh?”

The denunciation is not new, but is part of a trend.

The same press outlets that publish conspiracy theories now also put out pieces ridiculing them. Both the accusers and the defenders are Arabs and Muslims. What’s missing from the debate is America’s so-called public diplomacy.

The Arab pushback began some time ago. In February 2006, Wafa Sultan, then a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, appeared on Al-Jazeera and rocked the Arab world from one end to the other by bitterly criticizing not only Muslim clerics and political leaders but also interpretations of the Koran as deeply reactionary, anti-woman, and anti-Islamic.

What began as a drizzle is now a torrent on networks and radio and in newspapers and magazines, which is more reason to wonder about American diplomacy — or lack thereof.

One would have hoped that enough Arab speakers are now working in American embassies to report it all back to Washington, and enough smart folks there to fashion a strategy to take advantage of it.

Instead, American embassies across the Arab and Muslim world are still kowtowing to despots. All our discourse about democracy and reform has faded when it needed to grow in intensity. Nor is there a strategy to counter the region’s amazing fairy tales.

Among the best of the tales that Mr. Howeidi and his fundamentalist cronies have spun is how the internecine Palestinian Arab fighting is an invention of Washington and Israel; how there is definite proof that America made and released the recording of Saddam Hussein’s botched hanging to inflame the sectarian war between the Shiites and Sunnis; and — still the best of them all — how Israeli suicide bombers posing as Saudis and Arabs carried out the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In poll after poll, more than 60% of Arabs believe that neither Saudi terrorists nor Arabs were responsible for September 11.

The least one can expect is that whenever conspiracies like this one crop up in Arab governmentowned press outlets, our “friends” should hear from Secretary of State Rice. Young reporters are told to follow the money. Applying that rule makes for juicier and juicier connections and questions.

For example, Asharq Al-Awsat, in which numerous Muslim fundamentalist writers attack America, Jews, and Christians every day, is owned by the family of Prince Salman bin Abdel-Aziz, who is the governor of Riyadh and fourth or fifth in line to the throne.

Al Ahram, where Mr. Howeidi and other hate-mongering writers appear weekly, belongs to the Egyptian government, which is led by an American ally, President Mubarak. The same crowd of writers is widely syndicated for a handsome sum in dozens of Arab government-owned press outlets.

Al-Jazeera, far and away the most powerful spreader of hate and the most popular Arab network to boot, is owned by one of America’s closest allies, the Qatari royal family, which is actively protected by the largest American air base in the region.

One might think, therefore, that the American ambassador in Doha would pick up the phone sometime to call His Royal Highness to say something along the lines of, “Your Royal Highness, what’s up with Al-Jazeera?” The network to this day continues to air Muslim preachers who call Christians and Jews pigs and monkeys.

Vice President Cheney might also call his friend King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to chat about Al-Arabiya — a network owned by the Saudi royal family — whose weekly documentaries detail countless American plots in Iraq, the Palestinian Arab territories, and the Persian Gulf.

Luckily, the Arabs are beginning to do that job themselves.

They could use a hand from Uncle Sam.