The usual gist is that Isis is a sworn enemy of the US and hates us because it hates our freedoms or something. But Isis is really more of a combination of mafiosos and religious lunatics, and is mostly not interested in conquest of the United States. The restoration of the ancient Muslim Caliphate does not involve anything in the Western hemisphere. It would be easy to simply make a deal with them for the US and Isis to ignore each other. EXCEPT that Syria has a border with Israel. We are in reality fighting so that Israel will have nicer neighbors. And, of course, even though the US may not need the oil, US companies need oil to sell, and the more the better.
Americans can normally get along with strange, oppressive and disgusting things going on abroad so long as the media does not make a big deal of it.
Female circumcision has been going on since the Fall of the Roman Empire or even farther back, and no one in the West even was aware of it. The same is true with Koreans eating puppydogs, the French eating horsemeat, and Haitians eating kittycats. But the press did not focus on any weird foreign practices until the television era.
Describing Koreans eating Fido on the radio is not much of a story, bu showing doggies in the market in cages on the day before they become lunch, well, that makes for the sort of television story that people cannot resist.
When I was in elementary school, the only countries that were mentioned were England, France and Germany. Occasionally you would hear something about the Philippines, Japan or Korea. China did not exist, since we did not recognize it. The Russians (they never called them Soviets) were important only because they were the reason we had to duck and cover in case they nuked the Chevrolet Plant in Kansas City, Kansas. It was well known that the Russians did not like Chevrolets.
