The thinking of these Countries is that American's are "Cowards". This is not a guess, as it is what drove the Military in Beirut to take our hostages when that occurred a few years back. They took 20 some American's as hostages. As they were being abused we sat back and tried to negotiate with them. At the time I met with a couple of guys from Paris whos father lived in Beirut and when I asked them what they would suggest they said land the Marine's on their shore and go get the American hostages. By not doing that we were just adding to the Beirut's opinion that we were cowards. What is happening in Iran demonstrates the need not to allow ourselves to be pictured as "cowards" as it will just get worse.
