Iraq and Cambodia

While there are differences, the post-collapse outcomes are similar in that the U.S. wiped out the existing government structure, and then was 'surprised' when there was vicious power struggle in the vacuum. For it was the repeated bombing of Cambodia which destabilized and discredited a neutral government and paved the way for the Khmer Rouge. So in terms of Cambodia, the blame for civil war was placed on the KR, in Iraq it will be the supposedly innate violence of the Muslim people. Americans are so historically illiterate that this will pass muster with a vast majority of the population. Again, it is worth repeating a thousand times. The American people do not have a repressed streak of warm-heartedness just waiting to burst forth in a revolutionary flowering. OWS is dead wrong about this. This is a vicious country who still believes for the most part that God made it special and that the rest of the world is inferior and barbaric, and when others do win - it is because of 'cheating'. In this dominant viewpoint, the U.S. made a mistake trying to civil a people in Iraq who are beyond hope. The complacent general ignorance of the U.S. population, and of course our elite, is why decline is baked in - culturally , not to mention politically, reform is impossible. Though it is important for the historical record to show that there were dissidents.