So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Moslems and Arabs are essentially seen as either
oil suppliers or
potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab–Moslem life has entered the awareness of even those people whose
profession it is to report the Arab world. What we have, instead, is a series of crude, essentialized
caricatures of the Islamic world, presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression