@ 8:58: While the United States has not always been perfect, I feel that your blame is misplaced. Our support of Israel has forever earned the ire and hatred of Muslim Jihadis. Whether it fits into our national sense of fairness or not, this is a holy war to them. While such things are incomprehensible to us given our general sense of acceptance for lifestyle and religious differences, that is how it is viewed in the Middle East. I hate to describe it as such, but that is the way things are. Consider the mass genocide of Assyrians (Christians) and Chaldeans (Catholics) currently occurring in the Islamic State-occupied areas of Syria and Iraq. They have never been the ruling faction in either country and thus would not typically be targets of retribution. Spend some time with middle eastern people and ask them what life is really like in their countries. However, the problem is far too complex to be explained in a short post on a blog, but it has always been (and always will be) Sunni v. Shia v. moderate Muslims, Jews and Christians. We try to ignore this and act like that doesn't happen, but it is a sign of our national conceit that we assume that everyone in the world embraces what we do. King Abdullah of Jordan has commented on having to remember to think with his Arab mind as opposed to his Western mind as the two are distinctly different.
One simply needs to look at nations where one group significantly outnumbers the others. Syria (under Assad) is the only predominantly Muslim nation that forbids putting an individual's religion on their identification papers. Assad is a dictator as was Saddam and Tito, but both managed to keep warring factions in check for a significant period of time. As Americans, we don't understand nations/cultures that don't embrace or understand the concept of Jeffersonian democracy or even want it. I think of a point made in Mark Bowden's book Blackhawk Down: if you asked a Habr Gedir mother if she wanted peace, she would respond that she most certainly would. However, if asked if she her clan would share power with other clans, she would most likely respond that her clan would never embrace those murderers and thieves. Counterproductive to be sure, but status quo for the region. Whether we like it or not, IS needs to be destroyed as much as possible while we continue to engage the region in conflict resolution. I can't help but feel that we will be flailing the wind. And before it is stated, we didn't install Maliki in Iraq. The predominantly Shia constituency did. His failure to engage and work with the formerly ruling Sunnis was his own failure.
Have a wonderful day, everyone. Be safe and be strong.

"plunder, assault and capture Christian sailors for the local slave trade."

As compared to the completely civilized British who assaulted American ships in order to capture their sailors, who where then forced to work in British ships of war with a dramatically shortened life expectancy. Yes, we fought a war over that practice too.

And as for the US being a "stabilizing force in the region," perhaps you should investigate the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1953. Because he nationalized the oil industry and pissed off the Brits, even though he was desperately trying to being Iran into the 20th century with modern reforms, the US and UK arranged for a despot to eliminate Iran's last democracy. Because, of course, the despot would give them the lion's share of Iranian oil profits.

Now, no one is saying American "deserved it." But taking a good, hard look at past policies and actions goes a long way towards understanding the current feelings towards the US today. Or, you could simple keep believing that "they hate us for our freedom. Murica! F__ yeah!"