How the War on Iraq Hurts the United States

Part of the grand vision of the neoconservatives was, basically, the US as an ass-kicking machine. We could go anywhere, do anything, and make any government do what we want it to do because we have the best military in the world and the pure power of Democracy^tm backing it up. Underlying this vision of American omnipotence is the belief in American omniscience--that we can know what all of the other nations of the earth are doing.

The problem, of course, is that the myth of American omniscience was much more powerful than the fact of American ignorance. As the blogger Digby puts it:

Regardless of whether they hyped, sexed up or pimped out the intelligence on Iraq, the fact is that by invading Iraq the way we did and being proved complete asses now that no WMD have been discovered, one of our best defenses has been completely destroyed. It may have always been nothing but a pretense that we had hi-tech, super duper satellites with x-ray vision and all-knowing eavesdropping devices that can hear a pin drop half a world away but it was a very useful pretense. Nobody knew exactly what we were capable of. Now they do. It appears to everyone on the planet that our vaunted intelligence services couldn't find water even if they fell off of a fucking aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.

It's this kind of thing that makes really crazy wackos like Kim Jong Il make mistakes. When a hugely powerful country like the United States proves to the entire world that it is not as powerful as everyone thought, petty tyrants and ambitious generals tend to get excited. This is why mighty nations should never fight wars unless they absolutely have to. It is always better to have enemies wonder whether they are as omnipotent as they appear. They should not risk proving otherwise unless they have no choice.

There's more, of course. There usually is. Go read.