THE INGRATES! I find it troubling that the president seems to be grossly ignorant of how the world works: "the president expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd." Well, I'm frustrated too. Maybe Bush should consider the possibility that his policies are really, really dumb and are based on a totally unrealistic assessment of the situation in Iraq and the Arab world more generally, and that a wholesale reconsideration of them is well overdue.
The great irony of this all is that if there's one thing the Republican Party does understand really well it's the psychology and politics of nationalism. They understand it, that is, in terms of U.S. domestic politics. It doesn't seem to occur to them, however, that these insights might want to be extended to how foreigners -- who are, after all, human beings just like Americans -- react to things.
--Matthew Yglesias
