I found this interesting...
USAToday said:Iraq war can make up for earlier U.S. missteps By Max Boot
Machiavelli famously advised that it "is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with."
America's peculiar misfortune in the Middle East has been that we are neither loved nor feared. The invasion of Iraq presents a historic opportunity to make up for that deficit in both categories.
Osama bin Laden has been most vociferous in expressing his contempt for the United States, calling America a "weak horse" and saying he was "astonished to observe how weak, impotent and cowardly the American soldier is." This opinion — an unfair one, needless to say — was formed from watching the United States pull out of Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia after suffering casualties. Saddam Hussein no doubt hopes to provoke a similar reaction by televising pictures of dead and captured U.S. service members.
Others in the region quietly have made a similar assessment of U.S. weakness. They range from avowed enemies, such as Syria's Bashar Assad, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei, to putative friends such as those Saudis who have bankrolled anti-American madrassas and possibly terrorists.
The problem is that none of these regimes particularly fears Washington's wrath. The reason is obvious: America has a long history of impotence in the region, going back to the Suez Crisis of 1956, when the United States failed to support its friends, Israel, France and Britain, in their conflict with the anti-American dictator of Egypt.
The most recent period of U.S. relations with the Middle East began with the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. President Carter responded with months of hemming and hawing, followed by an ineffectual raid. The U.S. hostages eventually were released, but America's failure to take more vigorous action against Iran encouraged the mullahs to step up their offensive against the Great Satan.
In the 1980s, Americans in Lebanon were kidnapped by Hezbollah terrorists armed and directed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps with the active connivance of Syria. Many more were killed in bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. In response, President Reagan meekly scuttled out of Lebanon and sent Iran planeloads of weapons to buy the hostages' release.
The United States was an equal-opportunity appeaser. It armed Iran while it supported Iraq in its war against its Persian neighbor. This may have been justified realpolitik to forestall Iranian domination of the gulf, but it was carried too far when U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie gave Saddam a virtual green light in July 1990 to invade Kuwait by telling him that the United States had "no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."
The first President Bush, with a strong prompt from British leader Margaret Thatcher, dashed Saddam's hopes that the USA would acquiesce in his brutal occupation. But while allied forces expelled Iraqi troops from Kuwait, they were ordered not to march to Baghdad.
Saddam took advantage of this to slaughter thousands of Kurds and Shiites who rose up against his rule at American instigation.
Operation Iraqi Freedom can make up for America's sordid betrayal of those freedom fighters. It also can help redress the Clinton administration's baleful record of ineffectuality when responding to the terrorist outrages of the 1990s.
Islamist terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, the Khobar Towers barracks in 1996, two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000. The U.S. response was limited to a few cruise-missile strikes. Bob Woodward's book, Bush at War, reveals that a team of Afghan agents even offered to assassinate bin Laden, but was rebuffed by the CIA, which didn't want to violate an executive ban on assassinations. Thus al-Qaeda was left free to stage the attacks of 9/11.
It was unclear what al-Qaeda expected would happen afterward; probably, either another cruise-missile strike or a blundering invasion that would meet the same fate as the Red Army in Afghanistan. Either way, the Taliban and al-Qaeda were not prepared for the precise, lethal counteroffensive that ensued. This has provided a vital boost for U.S. security, not only by routing the terrorist network, but also by dispelling the myth of U.S. weakness.
The invasion of Iraq will be another vital step toward restoring a healthy fear of U.S. power. This is vitally important because we need to deter militants from attacking us and rogue regimes from scheming to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
If successful, Operation Iraqi Freedom also could make America more popular. Part of the reason the USA is so hated in the Middle East is that it is seen, rightly or wrongly, as the prop holding up despotic regimes such as those that rule Egypt and Saudi Arabia. If U.S. troops can create a democratic Iraq, we can show that America's commitment to freedom doesn't exclude Muslims. It might even spur liberalizing trends in neighboring states such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, whose people will demand the same freedoms.
America may never exactly be loved; no hegemony ever is. But if the invasion of Iraq can increase the respect we receive in the region, it will make a vital contribution to the United States' long-term security.
Max Boot is an Olin senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power.
