Many Western liberals think that they understand other cultures because they’ve been indoctrinated in multi-culturalism.
The problem is that the various “victim-group studies” subjects (women, black, Native American, Hispanic, etc.) aren’t really about those groups and their cultures at all.
They are instead about the history of white male oppression of these groups. Those who study these subjects aren’t interested at all in the people or cultures in question, except insofar as they can be used for a club with which to beat their own society and feed their own self-esteem.
Multiculturalism explains the problem with those on the left and some others, but there is also a segment on the right who cling to the naive notion that folks all over the world want the same things, that they all want something like American freedom and democracy. That's just naive and dangerously wrong.
I'm afraid we'll get unpleasant lessons in that reality as US troops, and their control and influence are removed from Iraq and Afghanistan.