Television cameras have a way of attracting crowds, particularly when smaller groups of people can cluster around and appear to be far more numerous than they really are.

We have seen so many such instances in dispatches from Iraq and other countries such as Afghanistan in recent times as coalition armed forces headed by Americans combat enemies and despot regimes. Here the people have been suffering and struggling for years under a Saddam Hussein or Taliban regime and doing so obediently. They dared not do otherwise, considering the blood lusts of their leaders toward anything resembling dissent or disagreement. Little food, little water, miserable living conditions, but it is all they were allowed and they knew any complaint could lead to death, or presence in one of the torture chambers of “the regime.”

As the Detroit Free Press noted recently: “Witnesses tell of victims herded alive into trenches, then shot and buried with one in five probably still breathing, or of bodies arriving by the truckful to be thrown into a single pit. Iraqis knew of many gravesites and dug them up as soon as Saddam’s regime fell, but each week seems to bring another discovery. Saddam’s regime has the blood of 200,000 to 300,000 people on its hands.”

So along come the Americans and their allies to topple the tyrants and to attempt to inject a little more humanity and hope onto the scene. Suddenly they are the villains.

What we get are shouting mobs waving and thrusting their fists, dancing in opposition and, of course, throwing the inevitable rocks at our people and our vehicles. It’s all America’s fault. The people have had a massive yoke taken from their collective neck and they want everything they did not have — and they want it now! Not in three days, three weeks or even three months, but immediately!

If they do not get what they want, even though so many of them have no idea whatever how to deal with free choice and progress, it is time to howl and demonstrate and act ugly. If Uncle Sam is so great, how come he can’t give them instant satisfaction? Never mind how the “regimes” ran things.

The question is, where were all these gallant and courageous souls when the Saddam Hussein minions and the Taliban hierarchy were in control? Things were worse and there was no chance of improvement, so why not protest against them?

The answer is too easy. They couldn’t, and knew it full well. So along comes the coalition with America in the forefront and the newcomers are considered the ones to blame and make demands upon rather than the predecessors.

A Kansas University Rhodes Scholar who has spent time in Iraq points out that the people there have had decisions made for them for so long that most of them do not even know how to decide for themselves. A deep and abiding learning process is in order.

But do they know how to demonstrate, now that the villains who prevented their even thinking about such displays are out of the picture?

Yes, television cameras and reporters tend to draw such crowds. Not only must they help put things in perspective but so must the rest of us when we see these orchestrated vignettes.

The truth is there are a lot of Islamics who are celebrating our contributions rather than waving fists and throwing rocks in frustration. When are they going to start helping themselves a little?