Arrogance and Ignorance

Things certainly would have turned out differently in Iraq if Bush had paid attention to the more thoughtful analysts in the country. I just reread James Fallows The 51st State? which was published in the Atlantic Monthly in November of 2002. In it he warns of the danger of being over optimistic. He writes "If we had to choose a single analogy to govern our thinking about Iraq, my candidate would be World War I. The reason is not simply the one the historian David Fromkin advanced in his book A Peace to End All Peace : that the division of former Ottoman Empire territories after that war created many of the enduring problems of modern Iraq and the Middle East as a whole. The Great War is also relevant as a powerful example of the limits of human imagination: specifically, imagination about the long-term consequences of war." For more of Fallows' insights read Blind Into Bagdad.