Digby: Eating Their Lunch

I've long speculated that one of the biggest miscalculations of the war in Iraq was exploding the American mystique of military and intelligence superiority. It's like that old saying "It is better to remain quiet and thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt." It's better to hold your fire and be thought weak than attack for no good reason and remove all doubt.

But at least America had decades of post war success to draw upon and diplomatic and economic clout to employ even as it degraded its reputation in all those areas.