“Expert, too, become lost in fog of war,” David D. Perlmutter, USA Today, 4 May, p. 13A.
Brilliant op-ed in today’s USA Today by military historian. It’s just a reminder that virtually every war we’ve ever waged pretty much sucked all the way through until in ended and we realized it was a win (or didn’t realize the loss in Vietnam). That’s why the definition of success here is what is crucial. Not an instant democracy, nor the end of all terror there, but an Iraq government that can police its own population and doesn’t stand in the way of growing broadband economic, social, and technological connectivity between that population and the outside world.
Everybody thinks we’re ending something in Iraq (Saddam). It’s the other way around. We’re starting something. We’re accelerating the great rule-set clash that history demands will play itself out within Islam as globalization advances. We’re just globalization’s bodyguard—letting the connectivity flow in and making sure the wannabe dictators can’t shut down the flow.
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