[SunkenCiv]

This is where Bush and the US military leaders failed: they simply ignored history of the region, and ignored the cultural traditions of the local people, not only in Iraq, but in Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan (which, by the way, we will lose in time according to history).

Same stupidity, different day. The writer obviously is ignorant of history, and is ignorant that everything changes over time. Afghanistan is a cobbled-together group of somewhat/somehow related ethnic groups, and was cobbled together by the colonial power which pulled out. The area was conquered by the Persians, who held it for centuries without too much trouble, and that was followed by the conquest of Alexander the Great, who left behind hybrid successor states. The Moslems conquered it quite a while back, and it remains overwhelmingly Moslem.

[Fred Nerks]

The fact that many of our social and science heritages are really Arabic, from the intuition of marriage, to our math, medicine, and physics, for example, and goes mostly unrecognized, says much about Americans’ ignorance about their roots as is their President's.

That's as far as I got...

[Seadog Bytes]

Agreed!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1773548/posts?page=9#9