The following statement appeared in an article on the opinion page of The Japan Times in July 2003: "The main result of the U.S. action (in Iraq) will probably be to turn a nation free from al-Qaida links into yet another hotbed of anti-U.S. 'terrorism,' and to push one of the few secular Middle Eastern societies into the embrace of Islamic extremists."
I don't want to sound like an "I told you so" pundit. But having authored the above and having also predicted in these pages that claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaida connections would prove false, I think I have some credentials.
I also predicted that, as in Vietnam, having large numbers of gun-happy, culture-ignorant U.S. troops in an Iraq controlled by America's cumbrous, cowboy (good guy vs. bad guy) and body count-obsessed military bureaucracy would guarantee eventual defeat. For every person killed, three more would want to take his or her place. It would also delight al-Qaida militants who would no longer have to go all the way to the U.S. to wreak hatred on Americans.