Washington's Close-Minded Mideast Thinking

A perennial shortcoming in America’s interactions with the Middle East is that they tend to emerge from insular discussions. Policy is the result of calculations that usually rotate around Washington. Consequently, regional realities are frequently ignored, poorly understood, or bent out of shape to fit a favored agenda.

This was the case in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Disagreements between different government bureaucracies, civilian and military, played themselves out through media leaks. Intellectuals, too, hotly debated the merits of war. However, the Iraqis were marginal in the commotion, which is why so many Americans were taken aback by what happened once Baghdad fell.