They (still) don't know us very well, do they?
Believe me, you're not getting half as tired of me saying this as I am getting.

Our international friends think Americans are arrogant. They haven't heard the half of it. Get a load of this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Can you beat that? We think our rights apply to every human being on the planet! How arrogant is that?

Okay, maybe I'm being silly. But we Americans take those words seriously, and you won't understand us unless you understand them, and believe that we believe them.

All America really wants is to live in its own way. We think most people feel the same way. We've no interest in owning Afghanistan. We're not in the colonialization business: Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, don't want to go back. We like our way of life, and that steady stream of immigrants would seem to indicate that a lot of other people prefer it, too. We think Afghanistan would like it if they tried it, but it's not our place to force it on them.

God knows we don't want to rule the world. It's really nothing to us how the rest of you want to run your countries, so long as you can continue to do business like adults, and so long as our people are safe when they're in your country doing business with you. We'd really rather you didn't slaughter your own people, but when it comes down to it, the only thing we really have a right to do about it is to stop doing business with you. "Play nice or we'll take our checkbook and go home." For most of you that seems to be incentive enough.

Those rights I mentioned -- you know, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness? -- apply to you, too. You have the right to live however you want. Right up to the point you start shooting at us.

The Great American Rulebook is right there where anybody can see it. Check it out.