salam
The term might have different connotations to you, but an occupation means that the country is administered by a foreign military. In other words, the civil administration is run by some officer or other potentate of a foreign power, like Douglas MacArthur running Japan or whatever. That is not how the Gulf states are run, despite the presence of american military bases, but you would know better about that than I. We've talked about sheikh zayed and other leaders
By the way, Egypt does have foreign troops in it. I also have no problems with Egypt's relationship with the USA. Actually, my cousin managed (with no connections of any kind) to get a chance to get trained in public health at Johns Hopkins, all at the expense of uncle sam as part of some program the USA was doing with the Egyptian public health service, and now he has a great job as a doctor for the World Health Organization earning much more than he ever could as a government employed doc in Egypt. We dont have billions of dollars coming out of the ground in Egypt, there is no money for our government to send people abroad to receive advanced training in various fields, without programs like this they simply wouldnt be trained. There are two sides to US aid in foreign countries, people generally look at one or the other depending on their polemics but there are two sides.
Anyway, avoiding a long semantic argument about occupation, I think what matters is the perception of impotence and lack of control. In some cases it might be real, I doubt your country could declare war on some other country or build an atom bomb without American approval. That obviously and justifiably bothers people. But for most things, its not like that. You guys do have a say over most of your affairs, both foreign and domestic. Its just a narrow set of things where you have to listen to the USA (and if it wasnt America it would be some other major power). But that translates into a view of the world where your country is enslaved and occupied by America and people are fantasizing about wars and revenge against these gringos. The same can be said of Egypt.
I dont know whether a materialist culture has an impact on whether or not people have a positive vision for the future. I suppose it could. It certainly did for "mainstream" Americans through the last 2 centuries. But Arab culture is pretty materialistic too. Actually, i think its a universal thing. If you're talking about American-style consumerism, that has proliferated everywhere and is pretty prominent in the Gulf and other parts of the middle east. And if you mean the American drive to own everything, have the biggest and best of everything, and so on, you guys are probably right after Americans in that regard. Most Bentleys per capita, tallest building, biggest mall, most massive indoor ski mountain, etc etc. I think its really a feature of capitalist cultures in general, some societies just have more resources to pursue these drives. And it isnt necessarily a bad thing, but it can be.
by the way i think we officially wrecked this topic
