It goes deeper than that. The White House plays off the ignorance and emotion of this group to do their bidding. This is what these people are dying for - giving us cheap fuel and preventing China from getting their hands on it.

Now ask yourself - do you agree with the decisions of these non-religious and well educated people? Yes, it started with Bush and Obama largely pulled them out. But Obama has failed in bringing order and instituting a functional society. Whether that country is even culturally capable of that after the trauma they've been through is debatable. But that's where we're at.

Why did nearly 4500 soldiers die in Iraq? To provide cheap fuel and block China? Yes. But I'll leave the mathematics of the total estimated amount of oil in the ground and preventing China from getting it to someone else.

As ISIS has demonstrated though, we're not even competent at maintaining an imperialist vassal state.

Seems like a lot of money for what's in the ground.

First, I apologize if that came across as one dimensional, but it's a very complicated issue which is difficult to really cover in a single HN comment. I also don't lean one way or the other - I think the American hegemony has served humanity very well, and an intelligence advantage is critical to that. But, on the other hand, just as there are countries "on the brink of nuclear capability", which posses the technology and material and can develop a bomb in few months time (like Japan for example) - so is USA approaching an "on the brink" police state, with huge surveillance capabilities, militarized local police and a whole lot of armed federal agencies and national guard units. These capabilities, in the wrong hands or at a time of crisis, can lead America down a very dangerous slope.

So I definitely don't take this issue as a simplistic one.

However, more to your point:

1. The "American Establishment" is part of the problem, not of the solution. It's a classic case showing failures of checks and balances and of a shady power grab in the executive branch. The support of NSA activities is not a partisan affair.

2. In the Snowden case, a significant part of the media chose to label his actions as treason. Some did so directly, and others through adopting the official White House line. It was even worse with Manning.

3. The constitution, free market and gun rights lend America the notion of the "land of the free". That resonates across a significant part of the American public, and that's certainly a common perception (not necessarily a hawkish one). Freedom is a concept that's rooted deeply in the American mind. It's easy for an ordinary citizen to assume that a country placing so much emphasis on freedom would act in good faith to uphold it.

If you survey Americans about "what is the most free country of the world", they would say USA. They wouldn't believe you if you told them the USA has more monitoring measures to track its own citizens in place than any other country in the world, North Korea, China and Russia included.

So while my post was a bit one dimensional, so I say is the perception among the American public, and this good faith the public has in the country has given each administration a blank check to do as they please.