Maybe a little too long for the sane to comprehend. What are we supposed to do now?
Good question actually and not an easy one to answer. You have one major problem and that is your dependence on oil. It means you need the oil from the middle east, either to stabilize the price of oil, or actually to consume. This has lead to almost 100 years of petro companies (the 7 sisters.. google it) basically defining American foreign policy in the region. Get off oil, and you can say "**** you" to the middle east and leave.
But do you really see yourself getting off oil any time soon with the political right and oil companies fighting against alternative energy sources all in the while say "Drill drill drill baby"?
And then there is the Israel issue.. which is easily solve-able as well. Remove the unconditional support and watch Israel behave and suddenly want real peace for security.
We could say that blowing up innocents, mutilating and abusing women,and declaring war on the rest of the world is just those boys being boys, doing what they do.
To be frank.. as long as they are doing it to themselves and not Americans or anyone outside the region.. then yea who cares. People have been abusing other people and innocents since the dawn of time. Even today it is happening in the US on a daily basis, but no one is doing much to deal with it. Where are the mass arrests of company owners using illegal aliens and abusing these aliens? Or the arrests of religious groups that use children in the sex games?
As for declaring war on the rest of the world....no one has that. If any war has been declared it has been from the US and its allies against so called terror, which in many cases (but not all) was the direct result in abuses by the very same US and its allies, either in the present or the past.
It does not justify the terror in any way, but does explain why some of it has happened, which is one of the first steps in trying to prevent similar acts in the future. When people are abused and downtrodden, then in many cases they will react violently to free themselves from the oppressors.. or should they not do that according to you?
After all, it's really our fault they're doing those things.
Who said it was? It is their own fault and traditions and backward ways and religion.
All "you" have done as a nation is become a lighting rod for every crackpot who wants power and uses the above mention crap to take power and keep power. It is no difference than Hitler using the Jews and Socialists as blame for all the problems of Germany after WW1. It is no difference than Amin of Uganda blaming the Asian population for problems in Uganda and deporting them all.. crashing the economy as a result btw.
Lets give an example. The Beirut barracks bombings.
The US and others entered Lebanon to stop a civil war. That alone was stupid, but that is another discussion. The reaction of this action and actions on the ground saw the US barracks being attacked and a lot of people killed. As a reaction to this, the US and France bombed many areas of Lebanon and the USS New Jersey lobbed 300 shells into the Bekaa Valley.
Now people in the Bekaa Valley, where many radicals have come from became radicalized because of the shelling by the USS New Jersey. They could care less that it was a reaction to the car bombing of the US barracks and to this day, many in Lebanon, especially in the areas hit by the US and French forces, see these attacks as a reason to hate the US and France.
The goal of the terrorists was to get the US and its allies out of Lebanon so they could continue the war, and that as accomplished. But the attack also brought a lot of new recruits to the side of the terrorists.. not because of the attacks, but the reaction to the attacks by the US and France... where they targeted civilian areas pretty indiscriminately.
Or, we could try to stop some of that ****.
You cant, that is the problem! You dont have the financial means nor the military means. You would have to do what you did to Nazi Germany to even remotely get close to fixing the problem, and even then the odds are against you simply because of geographics and logistics. And at least the Germans were a highly educated peoples... these people are not and that is a massive problem.
Take Bosnia.. in no way could you prevent nor stop that war and mass murder. Sure you could have sent troops in, that would have been slaughtered wholesale, something that the average American would never stomach. Or Syria.. sure send troops in.. but it wont solve the problem, and will only cause many more problems. Who do you defend or attack? Want to put islamist in power? Keep Assad in power? Protect his tribes from the rest of the country? And how about the Kurds who will revolt as well.. talk about a cluster**** of epic proportions.
And finally Iraq. Sure you sent troops in, got rid of Saddam based on lies. But what has that gotten you? A country split in 3, and dominated by Tehran and even more corrupt and violent than under Saddam. As a bonus Iran has become far more powerful and now has a direct link to its allies in Syria and Hamas/Hezbollah, something that US governments time and time tried to prevent. You also managed to train thousands and thousands of arabs in how to attack the US and refined terror on a grand scale. Did it make Iraqis love the US? Nope, quite the opposite. The mass murder of Iraqis kinda changes the hearts and minds of people ..
You cant police the world.. the Spanish tried it and failed costing them an empire in the process, and then the British who also ultimately failed and cost them their empire. You are now in the same situation and it is time to cut your losses or end up as irrelevant as the UK and Spain or even going back further.. the Turks (Ottoman Empire) and Italians (Romans and later Christian empires).
Forming alliances based on security and trade is the way forward.... not war and blackmail.
The idea that we are not universally loved, that we may be reviled in some quarters, is nothing new and nothing to get our panties in a twist over.
Has nothing about being universally loved. Thanks to the information age, people have started to understand how the US has operated the last 60-100+ years. Out of total self interest, while claiming some sort of higher moral ground, when in fact at home they were no better than the countries and people they were looking down on and attacking.
You also have to remember, the top dog politically world wide, has always been hated by those nations and peoples that it has "kept down or abused" either directly or indirectly.. hell even true or falsely. You do realize that the British Empire got the same treatment as the US is getting now... from among others.. the US itself! You do know that the US had plans to invade the British Empire right? That they saw the British as their main foe on the world stage for almost 100 years before they became allies in WW2.
The Anti-Americanism in Egypt is not unusual, since they are being shot by American bullets and American guns and American tear gas.
But on top of that, they have been fed a diet of anti-Americanism by the Soviets first (Soviets supported Egypt during the cold war), and later on religious nutjobs based on the US support for Israel. It wont go away any time soon but it can be levitated over time by good deeds and political actions that create a future for the people in the region and yes fixing the freaking Israeli-Palestinian problem.
But saying that... anti-Americanism benefits the US as well, especially certain industries... never forget that. High oil prices means big profits for oil companies. Conflict means more weapons and bloated military budgets.. .. never forget that.