TCS: Tech Central Station - The War of Images: "Right now the Middle American psyche is being overwhelmed with reasons to hate the entire Arab world; and yet the Bush administration insists that we are in Iraq to help the Arabs. Unfortunately, the administration seems to be completely unaware of how sick and tired of Arabs the average American has become, unaware because it is politically incorrect to express such sentiments of outright hostility: but what is politically incorrect to express is all too often the motive force behind those sudden and spontaneous movements of the popular psyche that only seemed to come from nowhere because they came from a place unfamiliar to most pundits and paid prophets, namely, the gut level feelings of the average guy.

Many Americans simply wish the Arabs would go away; others wish to blow them away -- and wish to blow them away not because they see this step as inevitable and tragic, but because they rejoice at the prospect of getting them back for what they have done to us. Most normal Americans today just don't care any more about the Arabs and their welfare, or about their humiliation, or about their historical grievances, simply because all the images that come to us from their world horrify and appall us, including the disturbing images of Americans doing things that no normal American would ever dream of doing to other people back at home, if only because they would never be given the opportunity.

This is how most normal Americans now feel, but they dare not express it in public. But make no mistake, this feeling will be expressed -- somehow, somewhere: a fact of which our leaders and the world must be made aware before it occurs."

I am afraid that this writer is right, and I think it is awful. The growing resentment of the Arab world is justified with regard to 9-11, but not with Iraq. What is it with American arrogance that they can invade and bomb the hell out of a country and then be angry when that country is not real fond of them. I put this squarely on the Administration and its continued insistence that we would be welcomed and loved. Jon Stewart has noted several times recently that our own history would be very different had the French come in, defeated the British, wrote our constitution and then finally left. Would we have the same sense of pride and patriotism? Why do we continually expect people to respond to our moral goodness after we bomb them? Why do we turn to the world and essentially say that if you don't love us, we will bomb you until you do?