Mitsu said: The problem with this war (the “war on terror”) is that the connection between actions and consequences are far separated — the outrage expressed by many Arabs over this war in Iraq will likely bear fruit in asymmetrical warfare far down the line — but it will be years, not months, before we truly see the fruit of our actions. This disconnect in time creates a tremendous problem, since one of the chief mistakes people make when evaluating the success of their actions is to assume that there is no time delay. Although military victory in Iraq is likely, the mistakes our leaders made when ascertaining the reaction of the Iraqi people leads to the conclusion that they will similarly misjudge their political reaction in many other ways. Iraqis have not been fleeing the country to refugee camps — they’ve been trying to get back in to fight us. There will certainly be some who cheer our troops as they roll in — but, as one Arab history professor put it the other day, there are always people who cheer troops as they roll in: there were Lebanese who cheered the Israelis when they came in. They stopped cheering pretty quickly. synthetic zero