Iraq is like Vietnam for two very basic and simple reasons:

1) As in the 1960's, we are led by a group of geopolitical types who think that the world is a chessboard, with the U.S. as grandmaster chess champion and all the other countries in the world as chesspieces (mostly pawns, others more powerful).

In their view, the job of the U.S. is to move all the pieces around in such a way as to yield the U.S. maximum benefit.

As in a chess game, there is no consideration given to the possibility that any of the individual pieces have any personality, creativity, history or interests of their own (other than their nominal attack capabilities vis a vis each other) much less any important relationships they might have with each other, any or all of which might foil our grand plans.

2) The Iraqis, like the Vietnamese, really hate it when we muck around in their affairs, and will fight us to the death because of it.

That's it; no over-intellecutalizing necessary!

The thread on today's Pentagon Defense Science Board report reminded me of two emails I received in 2001, just after 9/11, from a Kuwaiti acquaintance of mine.  His reaction to 9/11 was that there was no moral excuse for it, but that there WERE reasons.

I believe his provocative thoughts are pretty common among educated Arabs, and they corroborate many of the points in the Pentagon report.

Some of these opinions would doubtless offend  many Americans, even some open-minded Democrats. Certainly, there is much to disagree with, depending on one's interests. The point, however, is that this is the way most Arabs see the U.S., and there is great value in learning to see ourselves as others actually see us, rather than as we would like them to see us.

How else can we hope to come up with ways to change their view of us?

who are quite wealthy, and many are surprisingly liberal on social issues. But they really hate paying taxes--it seems to make them feel personally violated even though, financially, they did extremely well in the 1990's even with a 50% alternative minimum tax rate.  I certainly would have had more sympathy for this feeling when marginal rates were 90% (under Eisenhower) or 70% (under Nixon).

Now however, I sometimes want to shake them to get them to see that there is such a thing as 'good enough' when it comes to personal lifestyle, and that progressive social values have a financial cost.  I have pointed out that "creeping socialism" is a  dead issue anymore, but that there are still real problems that need to be solved. (more...)