perfidy

The Japanese are small and industrious, and wish to enslave us.
The Soviets are devious sociopaths, hell-bent on a Satanic mission of infiltration and subjugation.
The Mexicans are indolent and lazy.
The Italians? Chaos! Lock up your women!
The French? Quislings! Watch your back!
The Germans? You mean, the Hun?
Arabs? "You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face."

Oh, man oh man. I mean, is that really an attitude we want in a US military officer in Iraq? What about that hearts and minds thing?

I wouldn't lay blame specifically on soldiers in the field who are doing the best they can in the face of insurgency, chaos, and a lack of clear and sensible command mandates. Stereotyping is good for one thing, for good or bad: reducing a percieved overload of information and priorities to simple terms to that you can get on with your life. Given the knotty situation our soldiers on the ground are dealing with, it's no surprise that some of them have become jaded, as Capt. Brown's quote suggests.

Nevertheless, stuff like this suggests a lack of groovy come-togetherness of the kind that will make Iraqi citizens into our allies. This site has written before about the importance of getting Iraq's people on or near our side-- you nkow, by winning their hearts and minds by repeated shows of integrity, trust, competence, and tough/fair open-mindedness-- and as the political side of the libervasion seems increasingly aimless, the happy fuzzy groovy side only becomes more crucial. Dammit.

Bizarrely, I found a piece by Newt Gingrich on the importance of winning the hearts-and-minds war in Iraq. Well, that in and of itself is not so bizarre, but what is, is that I agree with him about how things are going (not well-ish), and why (plans? um...why do you ask?). It's a crazy world where Citizen Newt and I share an opinion.