Patch

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/opinion/01schlesinger.html

ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER Jr.

I ascribe our behavior to stupidity — the stupidity of our leadership, the stupidity of our culture. Three decades ago, we suffered defeat in an unwinnable war against tribalism, the most fanatic of political emotions, fighting against a country about which we knew nothing and in which we had no vital interests. Vietnam was hopeless enough, but to repeat the same arrogant folly 30 years later in Iraq is unforgivable.

The Swedish statesman Axel Oxenstierna famously said, “Behold, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.”