peterchen wrote: The US will write down in their diary, "we liberated an opressed country, sowed the fragile seeds of demcracy, and spent gazillion million dollars to rebuild their economy." My diary will read, "the US stirred up a mess they made up themselfes, let's guess when it will crumble down again. Oh, they now have their pipeline. And only to feed an attitude like this." And mine will read, "It is very comforting to people to blame Islamic fundamentalism on the US. It allows them to believe they will not be the victim if they retreat from world affairs. Strangely, they ignore the lessons of over a thousand years of Muslim holy wars which spread from Saudi Arabia, across the Middle East, across North Africa, into Spain, across the Balkans, as far as Hungary and Poland, into Africa, across Persia, and into India. It also harks back to older times, when people blamed disease and death of one's neighbor on some divine punishment for a crime their neighbor had committed. The belief was comforting for them, too, because it afforded them a logic which told them they were safe because they were 'decent people'. I'm growing more convinced that the US is suffering in the world from an uneasiness over the ubiquity of US power. Not because it is evil, but because its strength and ubiquity, itself are unsettling. It is Frankenstein's monster. Ugly, powerful, and deeply distrusted. Every move it makes is analyzed and scrutinized for any evidence that the creature, itself, is evil. Further, with every accusation of wrongdoing, Americans themselves are becoming defensive and quickly respond with past 'rights' that they have done - to convice the critics that the US is good, too. Which only emboldens it's critics, and strengthens their belief that Americans can only see good in their country and need to be re-educated. So, they attack the Americans again with criticism (as if accusations of greed and arrogance was the best way to win someone to your way of thinking), which again repeats the cycle of defensiveness. To make matters worse, some of the criticism is simply born out of half-logic and fear. Unfortunately, people believe what they feel is true, not what is logical." Here's a good example of that half-logic and fear-mongering (from the original article): Given that conclusion, the next step would be to realize that in order to get the oil you need to keep your nation's economy moving along at a price you can afford, you will henceforth have to appr
