<The idea that people will hate you enough to kill themselves because they envy "freedom" or material things is feel-good pap that even the writers can't believe.

Sorry. It's true. More murders have been done out of envy and jealousy than I could count. If you think a ghetto kid bashing the brains out of the driver of a carjacked Porche is doing it just because he needs transportation, think again.

I think that most of this anti-American attitude in other nations is not inherent in the people of these nations, but is fed into them by their governments, who see our prosperity and well-being contrasted with the poverty and pain generated by their dictatorial theocracies. They HAVE to show us as evil. They HAVE to tell their people that our prosperity is from thievery and exploitation, that our well-being is an illusion over a deep well of depravity. What is their only alternative? Admit we have organized our society in a better way than theirs? Admit that the road they have taken is the wrong one?

This is why Iran "hates" us. Like it's some big secret. Now what? When the study group comes back with the answers, how do you make them not hate us any more? Especially when their government has so much to gain by deflecting criticism and blaming us? Do we send them money? The heads of every politician who ever did them dirt? Do we promise to convert to Islam? Drop neutron bombs on Tel Aviv and give them Israel on a silver platter?

Do you honestly believe any of this would change anything?

The one thing that would really change the situation is the destruction of the hostile leadership of enemy nations, either from within or without, until eventually--hopefully--a moderate and at least partially secular leadership takes power. Turkey did this many years ago, and is still one of the best examples of a largely secular and democratic Muslim state. Is it that impossible that this could happen elsewhere?

How to encourage such a turnover without getting something worse at the other end is of course the real knotty problem, isn't it?