Failure and its recognition....

This is from The American Conservative. It's about legitimacy, goes the mantra once again, and legitimacy relies upon recognition of rightness and capacity.

Early this month, the International Herald Tribune published a story based on attitudes in that region at the time of Katrina, views jolted by the gap between the image of America that locals had in their minds and what Katrina presented on their TV screens. "How is it possible?" asked one Indonesian journalist. "How is it possible that in an advanced society like the United States it is so difficult to provide help or rescue people? How is it possible this breakdown in law and order could happen? Let's just say that it is noted that America sends troops to try to maintain order in distant places, but it seems to have difficulty to do it in their own back yard." Or as a Philippine government official put it, "It's so heartbreaking to see how helpless America has become. You're not strong any more. You can't even save your own countrymen and there you are, out there trying to control the world."

Such statements don't come configured with neo-Marxian accoutrements about hegemony and imperialism -- they are, rather like the child's response to the emperor's new clothes, a conclusion drawn from obvious visual evidence. Variations of this reaction swept the globe in the early days of September, at the beginning of Osama bin Laden's second term.

The underlying cause of this turnabout in world thinking was America's inability to tame the Iraq insurgency, two and half years after George W. Bush initiated a war of choice against Saddam. That war is not yet over for American troops or the Iraqis, but its basic strategic outcome is clear: as a vehicle for transforming the political culture of the Arab world in a pro-American direction, it is an utter failure....