Pshaw! Don't be foolish - Bahrain is one of the most safest places I've ever lived.
Warning - serious rant beginning!
Don't buy into the propoganda about foriegn countries, or even a subset of them (Islamic countries? Third world countries?) being dangerous. I have traveled through or lived in as diverse places as Sudan, Iran, Pakistan, Pakistani Kashmir, Japan, China, Russia, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Tchad, Australia, and a number of European countries. And Iraq, for the first five weeks of the war, but that's sort of a different situation.
Only once have I ever had problems or even really ever felt in danger, even in Iraq, and that one time was really my fault becuase we were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and we knew it. Nonetheless, even the most destitute, disturbingly poor people on the planet have almost always been extremely friendly to me. If I had a dime for every time a person who had nothing offered me thier house to stay in, their food to eat, or their time to share, I would be a rich man.
In Iran, every single person I talked to, I kid you not, was extremely friendly, and very embarrassed about their govt and how it was so screwed up. I even got approached by two of the religious police once on the street and when they came up to me and I said I was American they got massive grins on their faces and shook my hand, and wanted to talk about how much they loved the US. Then there was the time the policeman saw me looking at a bunch of anti-US propoganda on a building wall and came up to me an apologized for his government and how screwed up it was.
In Iraq, the people welcomed us with open arms. They loved us. Saddam was as evil as they come, and they really thought the world of us. I have seen those same faces all over the world, faces of people who haven't a damn thing to their name, but still they smile at you becuase, as an American, you represent something better, something more fair and freer than anything they've ever known. Wherever I have gone and seen these faces, in Iraq, in Uganda, in Nigeria, everywhere, it is clear what it was: it was hope. That what American ideals have represented to a lot of the people of the world.
This all makes me very sad - because we are losing all of that goodwill today.
People used to look up to the US. No matter where you went, you were welcomed and embraced as a representative of a country whose ideals everyone looked up to. But those ideals are being flushed down the toilet - now we torture and act the bully - and the ramifications of this are not only geo-political but cultural. And once you lose the trust of others, you can't really regain it...hell, not even the British like us anymore. Who would have thought that in a few short years we could alienate even the Brits?
A big part of the problem with Americans today is we are becoming more and more "exceptionalists" - we seem to think that somehow we're God's gift to the world, or that America is so special that anywhere else in the world has to be dangerous, or poor, or less 'virtuous' or immoral or 'wrong' in some other way.
And, I would bet all the money I have that the vast majority of people who feel that way have never been out of the States even once.
Don't be part of the problem. People in the US may think that the rest of the world doesn't matter, that there is no reason why Americans should even care about what other people think. I could make a million arguments that essentially prove that we are so interconnected today that to think we can 'go it alone' are fundamentally flawed (for example, what do you think would happen if the Chinese, Japanese, and Europeans called in their US treasury bonds? The Great Depression would probably pale in comparison to what would happen...)...
I could make a million practical arguments why we as Americans *should* care about what other people around the world think...but instead I ask that every American out there and think about what America *MEANS* as a concept. What happened to the ideals that this country was founded on? Are they not applicable to all people? Are they not inherently good, and if so, good for all?
Think about this: Rome fell, Greece fell, Babylon fell, Han China fell...over time everything that Man creates disappears. But ideas live on, and for each of these civilization that has disappeared, they have contributed to you, I, and all of us, through the ideals of laws, philosophy, morals, beleifs, and knowledge.
As time goes on, America will change geographically, ethnically, and in every other way. In twenty years, we may all speak Spanish, or have a civil war....and we cannot hold off forever inevitable changes...but what we can do, as individuals and people with free-will and morals, is we can uphold our ideals. Those are the only things that will survive for a thousand years. America won't be here in a thousand years. At this rate, maybe not even a hundred. But her ideals will - if we uphold them.
So, when Americans say that other countries or peoples are dangerous, or unenlightened, or whatever, I get upset - becuase what they are saying is that America is so special that we can afford to ignore the rest of the world, and approach it with arrogance. But in so doing, we are essentially saying that the ideals that our country was founded on apply only to ourselves, only to Americans. And by doing that, we tell the world that our ideals are not for ALL mankind, they are only for certain, special, people. And that will ensure that they do not survive the passage of time.
A passage to remember, and which I find useful as a yardstick to measure my actions:
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.
In the end, people are people. We're all stuck on this ball together. And we all need to have a little more understanding and open-mindedness, and a little less arrogance and exceptionalism. Only in that way will America's ideals survive, and not fade beneath the sands of time.
Ozymandias
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822
Rant ending!
Thanks,
Alarik
Ps: Above, I rant about American 'exceptionalism' but, of course, I also go on about how exceptional American ideals are. So I fully admit that I also fall into the exceptionalist trap -when it comes to our ideals, at least. I don't think American ideals are unique, however, as they derive from a great lineage leading back from the magna carta all the way to greece...and American ideals today are essentially the same as French, British, and a whole host of others...I didn't mean to imply otherwise, but I am most familiar with, and most energized by, the words and ideals that I as an American are most familiar with. Hope I didn't insult anyone by implying American ideals are the only ones worth beleiving in, for I certainly don't hold that opinion myself.
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alarikf said:
Heh, can't. I live in Bahrain
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Good God man, why?
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The tourism site makes it look quite good http://www.bahraintourism.com/
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Ya, but they negelect to tell you that as part of the once in a life time get away, you get away for good as your head is seperated from your body. 
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