This is a superb point. Americans are so quick to rally against any foreign leader that is sympathetic to Islam. In the US we've had decades of anti-Islamic p

This is a superb point. Americans are so quick to rally against any foreign leader that is sympathetic to Islam. In the US we've had decades of anti-Islamic propaganda, since it has helped sell various war efforts. All countries have some internal forces of pluralism and some internal voices of absolutism, for a variety of contemporary and historical reasons, and all citizens have the ability to consent and to dissent, and to thus influence their own destiny. In the US, we are such sheep that we enjoy indignantly criticizing the character of foreign leaders we know nothing about... while ignoring the atrocities committed by our own nation and the humanitarian disasters that we create abroad (and tolerate at home). Propaganda isn't simply about promoting specific beliefs, it's about creating a distorted sense of what is important. So many Americans view "stopping Islamic fundamentalism" as significant and more important than so many other things. This view is the result of Billions of dollars spent on propaganda over decades. Dehumanization propaganda (which the US is expert at) creates a political environment where many (most?) American citizens are dismissive of the basic rationality (and basic human rights) of anyone characterized as Islamic. I believe that power systems gradually progress from "power by force" into something that looks more like pluralistic democracy. Not because the power holders decide to give up some of the power, but because they are successfully able to whitewash their nature by using propaganda messages. Over time, the government that waged genocide against native Americans and killed millions of Japanese civilians becomes the government that wants to wage a Trillion dollar war to free Iraqi women from oppression. This is not the steady march of humanitarian progress. It's the enveloping propaganda narrative. We are just as barbaric now as ever, and our most recent genocide has been against the Iraqi people and the victims of the drone attacks throughout the region. The anti-Islamic narrative used by the US Government to sell wars in the middle east has resulted in massive transfers of wealth... Generally, the plunder of a natural-resource-rich region by the US. There is absolutely no desire on the part of the US to create democracy or pluralism in the middle east. Islamic solidarity groups, the only sort of grassroots political movement likely to stop the region's US-supported dictators, are of course vilified by the US because they also oppose US-led destabilization of the region.