I'd refer you boys to Frances Fitzgerald's Pulitzer Prize winning work "Fire In the Lake"; her very perceptive analysis of how Americans never really understood Vietnamese culture during the Vietnam war. The complete inability to comprehend the culture contributed to the failure of the effort to "liberate" Vietnam from the communist north.

Seems to me (and I think your posting exchange backs me up) we don't know anything about what we've gotten ourselves into. George W. Bush's definition of  the "democracy" we're bringing to the Iraqis likely makes absolutely no sense from their cultural perspective. It's America's ultimate conceit; patronizing and vacant. We know what's best for you and we're gonna recreate you in our own image.

It's a desperate, doomed mission, and no matter who wins the election the death spiral- once started- will continue to its inevitable end.