The Americans are NOT stupid, or culturally cut-off. Their strategy in Iraq can be explained differently. The Americans need oil. We need oil bacause there is no alternative for plastics. We rely on oil - we need it for a stable economy. Iraq has much oil and weren't handing it over . We have no alternative to use to produce goods in our industrys to keep them making a profit. When the price of oil soars everything made from oil goes up in price.
The insurgents and Arab culture make the oil companies nervous. The oil companies do not want to send their boys in to a dangerous situation, so Uncle Sam has had to send extra boys in to show the oil Companies it's safe to go there, that Uncle Sam will back them up.
Let us not forget that George W Bush is an oil Baron like the Bin Ladens. They control the flow of oil around the world and in doing so they regulate our economies.
North Korea has no oil so there is no point spending lives there because it will not stabilise the worlds economy.
Wars are fought over trade and any excuse will do to go in and get the riches, it has always been the case over the centuries, nothing has changed. Except of course unless you are threatened with direct invasion you would go to war to prevent being taken over.
The Americans have learned (over Vietnam) that it doen't matter what the politics are so long as you can do business with them, they are OK. That is the lesson of Vietnam, too the fact that in the end people of a proud nation will fight to the very last to retain their identity. The English and Vietnamese are examples. The Iraqi's also seem to be in this mould. Everything else is a game of words. The problem the Americans have is the dead soldiers as it was in Vietnam. We need to learn how to create a balanced world economy without wars - very difficult when armaments stimulate economies.

Bruce Haigh - thanks mate.

I get the feeling that certain defence/foreign policy opinion leaders are playing it academically safe, sniffing the wind and may even sense a Rudd victory coming on.

Arjay

I am (almost) loathe to agree with you on the key importance of oil in the whole Iraq venture/occupation but you're right. Iraq is important because of its (cheap) oil and its proximity to the Saudis (with their oil). If democracy was the main US imperitive then 20 vicious dictatorships in Africa would need to feel the benefits of US democracy (indented with Abrams tank tracks) first.

Naturally a discussion of oil, the world's most valuable resource, having an influence on US or Australian foreign policy is too impolite for well payed foreign advisers/academics or even the Opposition.

Oil companies pay multi-billion $ oil levies and presumably hefty political campaign donations to the Coalition and the ALP. So any mainstream discussion of oil (Cheney stopped calling it "energy security policy" in 2001) as a reason for "I-raq" is not serious.

Its up to economic determinist Lefties and a few others (who cannot be bought off) to make the connection.

Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com

Sorry Barfenzie, but Americans, on the whole, ARE stupid and culturally cut-off. As an Aussie living and working in the US I find this thread very entertaining.

I don't think that americans are deliberately ignorant of other cultures (as they unfortunately are) its just that here is a country that has spent most of its history thinking of itself as no.1 in the world. Its also not just a homogenous bunch of people but in fact 50+ different nationalities all within the one land mass. A Californian is the not the same as someone from Alabama. I think one of the only true generalizations you can make is that there are so many individuals with so many irritating idiosyncracies in the US that Americans just switch themselves off and insulate. Only 36% voted at the last election, the majority have fired a gun at least once in their lives, and only 1 in 4 owns a passport. Gun-toting, apathetic, un-worldly god-botherers that don't seem to care that a complete idiot is running their country.

The American economic and political elite are not "ignorant;" all too many are arrogant, unfortunately.

Your close cousins in England were also arrogant in regard to the Mesopotamian Basin, 1915-1921. Possession of powerful weapons contributes to arrogance, as well as other factors.

See Fromm's excellent analysis of the founding of Iraq, "A Peace to End all Peace." Published in 1989, as I recall.

For purposes of argument, I challenge the widespread belief that the US is losing in Iraq.

Perhaps "W" is merely following the tried and true method of governance used by the British Empire: "Divide and rule."

When radical shia fevers reached a peak in the late 1970s, endangering the entire middle east, what was the American response?

Saddam was set loose on Iran: a horrible war developed between the two countries, effectively dampening the shia emotions and emptying their pocketbooks. Divide and rule.

A new round of extremism erupts in the late 1990s, endangering American and British lives; what is the solution? Attack Iraq, giving the terrorists a target. But also in the process: Bush and Blair have divided the moslem world, diverting the radicals' attention from the "west," turning shia excesses inward.

And here "W" and Blair have succeeded. Divide and rule.

Many of my friends are American's who are very good people and yet, while most American's are friendly to Australian's even with minimal knowledge, it is amazing the number of American's seen on discussion forums where any person who is not American, including those of her allies are hated. Australia and Canada high up on their list to hate.

The problem with America is that the people grow up surrounded by propaganda only matched by China and North Korea. When you grow up having your head filled with crud from the time of birth, one can only expect them to be of limited position.