Why do you find this to be such a surprise?
Even if the Americans were saints (which you aren't, just human) there would still be resentment. Everyone is always resentful of the top dog no matter if it's a schoolyard, the star of the local sports team, the rich guy in the big house, the beautiful girl getting the attention etc. The Arab and Muslim opinion being presented is only evidence that they are human and thus prone to human weakness like jealousy etc as the rest of us.
The Arabs were one of the most advanced cultures and societies on the planet and in the last five hundred years have fallen a long way {no renaissance and the religious fundamentalists in power) so it's natural that the "average" Arab is going to resent who ever replaced them at the top of the pyramid. Before the US became a superpower the Arabs resented the Europeans. So don't take it so personal. If Iceland was at the top they would be resented by both Arabs and Americans.
The Arabs and Iranians do have some reasons to be pissed off. America supports family run dictatorships all over the Middle East that treat their own people like crap. The Americans didn't take care of that nut Saddam Hussain when it was easy to do so and instead left the nut running around the neighbourhood scaring everybody. The Americans let the Afghans do the dirty work with the Russians and after the wall came tumbling down the Afghan role as cannon fodder in the cold war was forgotten. This post is not American bashing it's just to point out that their resentment is not completely spontaneous. America is not perfect when it comes to foreign policy and as the top dog is maybe even held to higher moral standards than human beings should be but still when it seems to you the top dog is keeping the dictator with a boot on your face in power people can get pretty resentful.
I don't want this to sound racist but it is a common characteristic for the ME and Islam to blame anyone but themselves for the problems they currently face. When I lived in Dubai I heard a thousand conspiracy theories from Saddam Hussain is a CIA agent kept in place so the west can sell weapons, to there is a room full of Jews with computers in Cyprus (why Cyprus I don't know) who are controlling the world.
There are more than a few Arabs that still think Sept 11th was a plot by Mossad to discredit the Muslims and Israel was actually behind attacks. The Egyptian lawyer of Mohamed Atta still won't admit his son was a mass murderer but blames Mossad for framing his son as the mastermind. This characteristic is their problem and not one that will be fixed anytime soon so you are just going to have to live with it. If America stopped supporting ME dictators it would go a long way to bringing them over from the "dark" side of denial.
Not all of "THEM" are crazy. The following is from a Pakistani businessman Izzat Majeed from the Pakistani Daily The Nation:
"We Muslims cannot keep blaming the West for all our ills. … The embarrassment of wretchedness among us is beyond repair. It is not just the poverty, the illiteracy and the absence of any commonly accepted social contract that define our sense of wretchedness; it is, rather the increasing awareness among us that we have failed as a civil society by not confronting the historical, social and political demons within us. … Without a reformation in the practice of I'Slam that makes it move forward and not backward there is not hope for us Muslims anywhere. We have reduced Islam to the organised hypocrisy of state-sponsored mullahism. For more than a thousand years Islam has stood still because of the mullahs, who became de facto clergy instead of genuine scholars, closed the door on 'ijtehan' {reinterpreting Islam in light of modernity} and no one came forward with an evolving application of the message of the holy Quran. All that mullahs tell you today is how to go back a thousand years. We have not been able to evolve a dynamic practice to bring Islam to the people in the language of their own specific era. … Oxford and Cambridge were the 'madrasas' {religious schools} of Christendom in the 13th century. Look where they are today - among the leading institutions of education in the world. Where are our institutions of learning?"
{Mr. Majeed then finishes by addressing bin Laden directly} "The last thing Muslims need is the growing darkness of your caves. … Holy Prophet Muhammad on returning from a battle said: 'We return from little Jihad to greater Jihad.' True Jihad today is not in the hijacking of planes, but in the manufacturing of them."
End.
They are not all crazy and they are not all resentful but it is a problem just like the American foreign policy of not supporting democratic regimes is a problem. Hopefully the road to recovery will start with the American military going in and crushing Saddam Hussain ASAP.
Cheers Smoker
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