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Can the secretary not see that it is the U.S. presence itself in Iraq that recruits "terrorists"? Can he not see that it may not be our tactics that are faulty, but our policy? Did he not know that invading an Islamic country could create more Islamic enemies than we kill? Has the Pentagon never studied Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and her subsequent expulsion by the Hezbollah guerrillas who were tots and sub-teens when Sharon's Merkava tanks first came storming in?
Has the secretary not read history? Post-1945, every single Western imperial power has been expelled from the Arab world. Why did we think we could go back, set up an imperial outpost in an ancient Arab capital that was the seat of the caliphate for 500 years, and be welcomed by flower-tossing Baghdadis and Tikritis as liberators?
In 1945, no people were more admired in the Arab world than we Americans. Yet, no Western nation is now more reviled. A question for the secretary: Might it not be that we have behaved in the Middle East so as to be perceived by the Arabs as the British came to be perceived by our founding fathers, as blustering and arrogant imperialists?
Would one be surprised to discover in British archives a memo from Lord North to King George saying, in the vernacular of the time, "Sire, the harder we work, the behinder we get"?
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