12:18AM
The New Rules: The Jury's Still Out on Iraq War [World Politics Review]
Monday, April 5, 2010 at 12:18AM 
Photo: President George W. Bush signs the H.J. Resolution 114 authorizing the use of force against Iraq, Oct. 16, 2002 (White House photo by Paul Morse).
When asked for his assessment of the French Revolution's historical impact, Zhou Enlai famously replied, "It is too early to tell." Historians are fond of citing the quotation, but at times ignore its fundamental insight: that they often arrive at their judgment of historical events prematurely. Nowhere does this seem truer than in the case of America's controversial intervention in Iraq.
Reader Comments (4)
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1. Sometimes rule-based strategic military engagement is required and with appropriate and sufficiently intelligent persistence, this engagement works to advance the social and personal rights and goods of humanity locally regionally and globally.2. US military engagement learns and teaches that US military engagement is communication connectivity and problem solving at a considerable price.3. Engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan has reinforced the notion that with the necessities difficulties complexities and vicissitudes of military engagements comes an extraordinarily rich opportunity for learning at all associated points of engagement-- strategically, in the context of everything else, and in order to inform confirm and refine a global grand strategy.4. Engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan has taught (suggested) that every nation’s and every tribe’s global strategy can and must seek to accommodate the rights of other nations and tribes to determine for themselves the kinds degrees directions and rates of progress in their local regional global economic social and cultural connectivity consistent with their own cultural identity and as they see their identity to be in proper relation to the cultural identities of other nations and/or tribes locally, regionally an globally.