I think there is another element in this and that is a form of self-deception. Obviously the US establishment tries to put a good propaganda face of some of its seamier actions. It can, and I think does, reach the point where there becomes too great a cognitive dissonance, and people begin to fool themselves and their own intellectual community with their own lies.

For example - is the US for or against Islamic extremism? Is it for or against a more secular society in the Middle East and Muslim countries? Most people here, or college-educated NPR or Fox News listeners I know think it is against it, and that the US wants to promote a more secular, moderate form of Islam around the world, as do allies like Israel. The problem is that all evidence over the preceding decades is against this. The US and England threw out the secular, democratic Mossadegh in Iran in the 1950s, and then the CIA helped the Shah's Savak jail or kill off anyone in the country supporting a return to a secular democracy. Almost unbelievable nowadays, Israel supported, including financially, the rise of Hamas and Hezbollah against what it saw as the more existential threats of the PFLP and the PLO.

What has the US been doing in the past few years? Supporting the most theocratic countries such as Saudi Arabia, where as it has been in the news lately, there are crackdowns on women who want to drive cars. The remains of the secular, pan-Arabist, Nasserite parties have been what the US has attacked in recent years - Iraq and Libya. Obama recently made the call for more intervention in the secular, Nasserite government of Syria and , surprisingly, some mainstream opinion noted he would in some fashion be supporting Al-Qaeda - which is true. Which is yet another case - the US supported the overthrow of the secular, socialist Afghanistan in order to put into power the mujahideen forces which later became Al Qaeda.

All of the historical evidence, from World War II until recent months shows the US opposes secular governments in these countries and supports Islamic fundamentalists and radicals. Yet for some reason, not only does US propaganda say the opposite, not only do Fox News watching blue collar Americans believe this, even NPR or Fox News listening college educated Americans believe this. College-educated Arabs know what the truth is, but somehow the reality hasn't penetrated the US.

Usually propaganda is just shading the truth, but for the Arab world, the news just openly lies. I watch talking head shows where they still say that Ahmadinejad said "Israel should be wiped off the map". I've heard this repeated for years over and over and over. It's just not true, a look at his remarks in Persian said he absolutely, certainly never said the word map, and even the rest of the translation is somewhat shaded. It's too good a lie to be bothered going into that, so this lie, which is now widely known to be a lie, is still endlessly repeated on in the US news media.