Look At America This Way.

Do ya know why America is having such trouble in the Middle-East? It's because of European Feudalism. Now I know that just doesn't make sense on it's face, but give it a chance. The mindset of Europe for more than a thousand years was the lords owning everything and the Serfs living and working much like slaves for the lords of the castle. Now forget about the Crusades, which we westerners have done, but Arabs have not forgotten. If you then look to the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of 20th century, you see European domination of much if not all of the underdeveloped world including the Middle-East. European powers set borders, installed governments and governed trade. During and after that time the United States went along with whatever Europe wanted. We weren't or claimed not to be interested in colonialism or expansion beyond our own borders. But a funny thing happened on the way to today. We found out that the middle-east had something we did want after all. It had oil, and good oil and in abundance, and we had a way to get it back to America, cheaply. So without realizing it, we took over for the Europeans at least to some extent. We supported despots who promised to like us, at least enough to sell us their oil, cheaply. But we didn't ask the people if they wanted things that way. We just asked the despots. Then there was the Viet Nam war which was terribly ill advised and which we lost. We really had had no business being there. The middle-east saw that. The greatest country in the world humbled by a little country. So despots became more independent and populations in the middle-east finally began to overthrow despots that we liked and even those we disliked. America still thought of itself as being big enough, strong enough to push and shove and put in place governments we wanted. Middle-Easterners had already decided they weren't going to let us decide for them. Then we got involved in two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which we should have been involved in to the extent we were. Afghanistan should have ended as soon as we got rid of AlQaida in the country. Nobody wanted or wants us to build their government. They want us to stick to our own business and then they'll stick to theirs, thank you very much.