Iraq And The SNP

When I first saw this, I was inclined to say, “Well, at least something good has come out of this dreadful mess.”  Alex Massie (via Ross) has saved me from making the mistake of thinking that anything good could really come from the Iraq war.  His post also serves as an important reminder of something that American observers of foreign politics should always heed: domestic political concerns are almost always more important to people in other countries than is U.S. foreign policy (which happens to be true of American voters as well).  We will generally not understand political events in other parts of the world if we try to understand them through such dim, cracked lenses as “pro-/anti-American” or “pro-/anti-Iraq war” and the like.  (Can I tell you how tired I am of stories that try to spin Gordon Brown as a vigorously pro-American Atlanticist?)  Contrary to our own impression of ourselves, other people really aren’t that preoccupied with us and our wars, even when their governments are involved in one of our misadventures.