Can we ever learn?

On Salon.com there's a column called "Ask the Pilot". In this week's column, there's a paragraph that summarizes why I get embarrassed to be from the United States.

Excavated from the rubble of Sept. 11 could have been, and should have been, a crucial and instructive lesson beyond the expected hand-wringing over security and preparedness. Specifically, a call for American citizens to broaden their horizons and develop a smarter sense of the world's mechanisms and conflicts. Instead, we appear to be growing even more insular, myopic, and unimpressed with the fact that large numbers of people despise us for reasons a tad more complex than "they hate freedom." It's a path we follow at our own peril, and it is exactly opposite to what global tensions mandate. We can't tell the difference between an Indian, a Tibetan, and an Islamic radical. More to the point, we don't seem interested in learning what those differences are.