Hey guys.

We Americans beat on ourselves a lot harder than the rest of the world put together. It's one of our greatest strengths and our last saving grace.

We sure have done some bad things in the past. We supported some nasty people in S. America. We didn't understand Vietnam's drive for independence against the French and by the time we had half a clue we were embroiled in a nasty sidebar of the Cold War over there. But in fact we were busy countering the Soviet threat to the World all through the 40's, 50's, 60's, and 70's. A lot of these smaller incidents of American bombing around the world were related to dealing with the evil empire. And it WAS an evil empire.

Now we are engaged on a different related task. An attempt at creating an evil empire by hijacking a world religion. It is a noble attempt, and may succeed.

Think how brutal the rise of Christianity was over the ages. Crusades, ghettoizations, the 100 years war, the 30 years war, the holocaust. Christianity has been a decent religion for about 40 years now, give or take. Islam is 600 years its junior and never had an enlightenment to call its own.

The original poster and the immediate following messages took note of the fact that the world doesn't hate America. America itself is a composition of the world such as no other country has (with the possible exception of Israel). I guess the world could be allowed to hate itself, but only as a passing reality to a more mature realization that no one religion, race, creed, or culture has all the answers.

Have faith. We will eventually learn to live in peace with others after we have exhausted all other options.