They also want to get out of Afghanistan. They don’t seem to care much that Iraq is slowly sliding back into chaos. The footage out of Egypt may be horrific, but I would be surprised by any groundswell of sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood.  Recall that this was the time when the Palestinians held an election in Gaza and proceeded to elect a repugnant terror organization, Hamas, as their dictators.Over the preceding two decades, the U.S. sent troops into harm’s way five times to liberate Muslim people — in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq — and yet America’s reputation generally worsened.

And whenever Muslim fanatics launched horrific and brutal terrorist attacks — slaughtering, mostly, fellow Muslims — the supposedly vast reservoirs of moderate Muslims rarely voiced much outrage. Meanwhile, our supposed partners in Afghanistan and Iraq, never mind our allies in Egypt and elsewhere, didn’t express much interest in democracy that extended beyond saying the right words to keep the river of U.S. tax dollars flowing.

All you need to do is read the headlines coming out of the Middle East and feel like, “I’ve seen this movie before.” And thanks to fracking and other technological boons, the fact that we’re becoming less and less reliant on Middle Eastern oil only serves to undermine arguments that we need regional stability at any cost. If real friends were threatened, the American people would support coming to their aid. It’s just that there’s a growing — or, in many cases, deepening — sense that we don’t have real friends in the Muslim world.