Mighty white of us

From the Wall Street Journal op-ed page comes the latest insight from the moral-values team: the problem in Iraq — and in all wars since Vietnam — is that we're too self-doubting to kick enough dark-skinned ass:

Certainly since Vietnam, America has increasingly practiced a policy of minimalism and restraint in war. And now this unacknowledged policy, which always makes a space for the enemy, has us in another long and rather passionless war against a weak enemy.

The collapse of white supremacy--and the resulting white guilt--introduced a new mechanism of power into the world: stigmatization with the evil of the Western past.

Unless you're too young to remember the Vietnam War (or your brand of truth comes from the Swift Boat Veterans), its lessons are pretty clear:

1. Don't fight a war without a really good reason
2. Having ignored the obvious wisdom of point #1, you'd better win the "hearts and minds" of the civilians
3. Having ignored point #1, winning the hearts and minds of civilians will be extremely difficult
4. The war will continue until you either commit genocide or decide to stop fighting
5. Don't fight a war without a really good reason

Update:

Interview with the op-ed piece's author.

Shelby Steele, whose father was black and his mother white, has many provocative things to say about race, such as:

I think New Orleans shamed black America. I was in Europe when it happened, and we saw all these images of deep intractable poverty. For generation after generation, New Orleans was full of human despair and backwardness. The flood just brought to the surface what had been there for so long, so we could see it on TV every night. And black America was truly shamed -- just ask blacks and they'll tell you.