We've been deceived by our government often enough that a huge segment of the population is immediately skeptical of anything they say that's provocative. See my history of the Baby Boomers and the Generation Gap, which is all over this website. By 1979 when a large fraction of the Boomers had finished their university degrees, that fraction were familiar with the Cold War political overlay in the Middle East and they knew that the Shah was a puppet installed by the CIA shortly after WWII. The anti-American feelings of the Iranians were understandable to them, and they were a powerful counterbalance to the older Americans, who were ready to declare war.
Jimmy Carter was an accidental President like Obama (Big Bird could have defeated Gerald Ford, Nixon's
appointed VP) and he was as "clueless" as Obama. Yet as a true Christian and--by political standards--a pacificst, he trod very carefully through the Iranian Hostage Crisis and avoided a military solution. He actually sent a small group of commandos on a rescue mission, which was totally bungled (we pacifists don't make good Commanders-in-Chief) and ended in disaster before they got close to the Embassy.
When the hostages were freed, all you can say about American opinion of Muslims is that it was divided, not to mention complicated. The Boomers were already becoming impatient with Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians, but the generation that is still campaigning (finally successfully) to end drug prohibition was enraged at the Turks for their draconian prosecution of an American with drugs in his luggage.
We did not yet understand that "clueless" President Carter had created the Afghan force that would evolve into the Taliban, as a move in the chess game against the Russians, in which the entire Middle East was our chessboard and its people merely pawns. So at this point we were "cluelessy" waiting to see how politics in the Middle East would develop. We got our answer two decades later, on 9/11.You're being disingenuous again and I'm calling you on this intellectual dishonesty, which will be reported to the Administrators for their consideration.
- You've read enough of my posts on this website (I know this because you've responded to many of them) to know that I understand history better than most Americans and I know full well the role of the European powers and the Cold Warriors in the shaping of modern Middle Eastern Politics.
- You know that I'm not an Arab-basher, and that I'm an equal-opportunity atheist who holds Christianity, Judaism and Islam in equal contempt. I would be delighted if we could ship all the fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Muslims off to a separate planet where they could happily go on killing each other in the name of their imaginary god and not keep catching us in the crossfire.
- The question in the OP was about "Americans" as a people, and you have changed it to me as an individual. My answers explain why Americans, as a people, feel the way they do, and they are rather carefully worded to emphasize my distance from the consensus. Any inconsistencies in rhetoric (due to the fact that I'm not being paid to write this and so don't proofread it as well as my professional work) must surely be easily identified as errors--especially by you, who are quite familiar with my opinions, including my continued solidarity with you on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
My answers pertain to the American people, not to me personally.
The American people, as a demographic group, knew nothing of the CIA coup that installed the Shah. The intellectuals among the Baby Boomers did, but they were a minority of the population in 1979. Plenty of Boomers were dropouts who traveled along with their cohorts for the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, attended all the protests, and voted for leftist candidates, but they had no idea what they were supporting--just like their counterparts on the right. In addition, not all the Boomers were leftists, as we learned in 2001 when a Rhodes Scholar Boomer left the White House and a drunken frat-boy warmonger Boomer moved in.
All in all, the leftists who typify the Boomer generation in the press were a brake on American rightist politics, but their influence was not uniform in all political arenas. They had a tremendous impact on race relations, the environment, the growth of the teachers' lobby that is now bankrupting California, and the spread of the welfare state, but as they grow older they have shifted to the right with their disdain for science, their religious fundamentalism and their irrational risk management.
The latter is illlustrated by their refusal to spend a few billion dollars to install breathalyzer interlocks in all new cars, which as the fleet turns over would save
one hundred fifty thousand lives per decade from drunk driving, while they commit trillions of dollars, give up their freedoms to the Homeland Gestapo, make this country a pariah state, and piss off one billion Muslims, in a dubious attempt to save the
three thousand lives lost to terrorism in that same decade.Your use of the word "all" is inflammatory and another instance of disingenuity. The majority of Americans live in cities, where they encounter Muslims in real life, and virtually no Muslims wear turbans and veils in America except diplomats from other countries and their wives. There is no stigma attached to wearing beards in America. I have one and so do several members of Congress, newscasters, and other prominent public figures.
At the very least, Americans understand that Muslims differ from one another as much as any people. We are constantly bombarded with news reports from the war zones in the Middle East highlighting the common people who do not hate America or support the terrorist movements. There is considerable support for the Palestinian cause in America, even among its Jewish community.
And thirty years after the Tehran Hostage Crisis we are virtually in love with the Iranian people. Their struggle against Ahmadinejad is front-page news.
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