After such a devastating and globally televised military defeat, the Muslim world is again at a crossroads. It can blame the collapse of the Iraqi army on Zionist intrigue, the fumes of colonialism, Saddam's secret treaties with Israel, CIA plots and fantastic stories of U.S. atomic bombs - or it can confront reality.
As long as democracy is unknown, religion mixed in with government, sexual apartheid practiced, tribalism promoted over meritocracy, freedom squashed, statism preferred over open markets and governments created by censorship and terror rather than votes, no Arab army, despite its oil-fuelled gallery of bristling imported arms, will ever defeat a Western military. Numbers, weather, location, personal courage, chance, fate, luck, a Hannibal or Shaka - all that and more - can usually be trumped on the battlefield by a military system that reflects the wider values of society at large.
But then a willingness to embrace Western-style self-critique, personal liberty, secular rationalism and consensual government would more likely make us friends or at least friendly rivals rather than overt enemies - and thus put an end to these "battles of the ages" for good. That may be the real lesson of Operation Iraqi Freedom after all.
