This decency and sense of

This decency and sense of fairness is America's greatest strength, but it has also been a weakness. Americans want to think of themselves as a benign nation that stands for the downtrodden against the strong, and for right against wrong. This has sometimes made it much harder to make people see the distortions that their government's policies have produced over decades in the Middle East and other parts of the world; that the America that they believe in and strive for --the America of decency and freedom -- is not the same America experienced by millions of people whose lives are ruined by US-backed dictators and despots, who see their loved ones incinerated by "smart bombs" and wasted by sanctions. People are sometimes unwilling to see an image in the mirror that they do not like. The America that wrote to reassure me and other Arab Americans that I am safe at home here is not the same America that with unconditional support sentences my cousins to a life of brutality and violence under endless Israeli occupation. But it is the America that can and must act to stop it.