What is misunderstanding? Misunderstanding is when two or more factions, people, companies, countries, etc. make a wrong assumption about one of their group. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines it as:
1. to fail to understand
2 : to interpret incorrectly

Have you ever had the problem where your husband or wife completely misunderstood why you did something, something you thought was completely innocent? This can happen and sometimes does on a much bigger scale at work. It can also happen between countries and sometimes can even lead to wars. When the cold war ended, some documents were released that showed that the Soviet Union actually thought that the United States might try and invade them. Sometimes people will read a book or look at a documentary on television or in the movies and completely misunderstand the author's point. I noticed this the first time after I read a book review where the reviewer was going over content point by point and interpreting everything the author meant.. This would have been fine except I saw the author being interviewed some time later and he was asked about this person's review. He laughed and said the reviewer was entirely wrong. This was sort of a harmless misunderstanding as misunderstandings go.

There is a great misunderstanding in the Catholic church right now. This was caused by the church itself. It has to do with what holy days are days of obligation. It used to be quite simple. The designated days called for church attendance when ever they fell. Now it depends where you are located. For example in Hawaii only Christmas and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception call for church attendance on a day other than Sunday if they fall on that day, yet if you live in the decease of Rockville Centre on Long Island in New York State you have six holy days that you must attend church on if they fall on a non Sunday. Many people think that there are no more holy days celebrated on a non Sunday and attendance at church on one of these holy days will prove that point. Again a relatively harmless misunderstanding. These rules vary so much that it is hard to know what to do as you move around the U.S.

Now lets take the war in Iraq. We started the war because we were informed that there were weapons of mass destruction in that country. After losing lives and being involved in much civil unrest, we find that there may never have been weapons of mass destruction. I guess this is the mother of all misunderstandings if it is true. A very dangerous and deadly misunderstanding indeed.

In 1957 a drug came out that supposedly would combat morning sickness in pregnant women. The whole process of how the drug worked was completely misunderstood. This drug caused horribly birth defects in many children. What the drug actually did do was prevent the fetus from growing properly. So many children were affected that a name was given to them, Thalidomide babies. Again this was a dangerous and deadly misunderstanding of a drug that seemed to not have been tested enough and tested properly.

The great Napoleon, rather than attack the British Isles at the time, attacked Egypt. His goal was to disrupt British trade and capture territory from the Ottoman Empire. What he got was a war with Russia that would eventually cause his downfall. He misunderstood the difficulty of a Russian invasion and resolve of the Russian people. The biggest invasion army ever formed up until that time fell. It started out with 422,000 men and by the time it had retreated into Poland it had dwindled to 10,000 men.

Have you ever noticed how a misunderstanding can lead to bad blood? How about when someone borrows money from you? You wait a long time and when they don't return it, you ask for it politely. They get very angry because they forgot they borrowed it. Your relationship with this person is usually never the same. This happens with countries. Think about promises made by leaders of countries to other countries only to be overridden by some congress or broken because of some circumstance.

America is misunderstood as is Islam. Lets take America first. Sometimes a leader may be elected that proves to be more hawkish than others. It may even turn out that the people, after seeing this, vote him out of office. His first term in office may not be representative of the people of this country. Yet we are branded by what happens during these years even if we correct this by an election. Of course there are policies that have not changed through several presidents and they have to be representative of the country even though everyone does not agree with them. One of the main problems we have is the power of the lobbyists to influence law makers. This country needs enforced laws that would not allow any legislator to get an advantage of any kind from pushing legislation for anyone or group. As for Islam, the vast majority of people are religious, God fearing people. Many of them are struggling with oppression and poverty. This country should take into consideration their plight with we set policy. Doing this might eliminate many of our current problems with terrorists.