Working out the perspectives for war takes a certain type of empathy. It should not be confused with sympathy or even, in this case, as necessitating a positive connotation. Every general should be empathetic to his enemy counterpart. If he is to stand a good chance of anticipating his moves and thereby forearming himself with the knowledge to defeat him, he must understand, get a feel for, and even put himself in the practical and psychological shoes of his opponent. This was sorely lacking both in the Administration and the Pentagon.

The Administration's want of cultural and humanitarian empathy meant Iraq was lost on the psychological level before a boot could hit the ground or a shot could be fired. The simplistic attitude that U.S. occupation would be unconditionally welcomed and that there would be a relatively smooth transition to a model Western-style democracy, which would act as a bulwark against fundamentalism and a beacon to transform other regimes in the region was pure fantasy. If anything testifies just how divorced from reality the Bush Administration is, it was this. Indeed it was something, which was so stubbornly entrenched that, they continued to believe in their own propaganda when the entire country began burning down around them. Their attitude was a gross misconception, derived from the inflated egocentric, all-American, imperialist mindset that consumed the Administration and which doomed it to calamity for the start. It was very much reminiscent of the arrogant way in which Central and Latin America has been regarded as the United States' backyard, and now euphemistically re-named our "neighbourhood" by Bush.

The Administration and the Army made no initial effort to understand the psychology of the Arabic and Muslim mind and the ways in which its invasion would be perceived and eventually repulsed. The problem with the egocentric and ethnocentric mind is that it, at best, perceives all others as thinking and feeling in ways which it does, of having the same norms and values as the West and believing itself to be perceived as some marvellous example to be modelled. At worst, the West still views other cultures as inferior and in need of civilizing, by force, if necessary. Not for one moment did the Bush Administration consider that Arabs and Muslims have their own quite different emphasis on mores and values, which often come into sharp conflict with those of the West and which they are deeply devoted to defending.

Consequently, with the utmost arrogance, U.S. troops booted down the door of Arab values and brought the worst of all possible insults upon them by dishonouring and humiliating them. In a region and culture, both Arabic and Muslim, where one's dignity and honour are to be defended at all cost, including one's life, the U.S. shamed the Iraqi nation, the Arab nation and the Muslim world. This happened in a culture where shame is the worst possible of destinies, unlike the guilt-based societies of the West.

The psychological and political difference is important and not semantic. Guilt focuses on inappropriate, bad behaviour aimed at creating a social conscience. Shame concerns self-worth and profoundly affects a sense of value towards one's worthiness to exist. Guilt can lead to reforms, while shame can lead to more harmful consequences, especially in terms of violence towards oneself or those who create it.

If shame is a stronger component of a culture than guilt then the motivation to avoid guilt leading to shame is far greater. The fight for one's honour is therefore much more ferocious than in a culture where guilt is more ready accepted and then paid for and forgiven. Indeed, it rules out compromise, negotiation or trading. It is above legal statutes. It is a matter of life and death.

If a shame-based culture is attacked and threatened with humiliation and dishonour, the likely reaction will be fiercer than guilt based cultures. This is the case in the Middle East and among Arab and Muslim peoples, among others. And what comes with it is a tendency to need to regain one's honour through retribution and retaliatory shaming of the persecutor. This extends to become the blood feud common to many Eastern rather than Western societies and is very dangerous once extended along national and religious dimensions.

It is a reason why the humiliation and shaming of the Palestinians has made it the cause célèbre of the Arab and Muslim world and also explains the ferocity of the eventual resistance to the US occupation in Iraq and its condemnation of by Arabs and Muslims worldwide. The occupation is felt and empathized as a humiliating, shameful, dishonour perpetrated by the infidel, United States upon Arab and Muslim brothers and sisters.

For Arabs and Muslims their honour and the shaming of themselves and their brethren is something which cannot go unavenged. One must be prepared to die for it. It is linked to the culture of retribution, where a hurt or death brought upon another of one's family, tribe or clan must be avenged and this now extends to one's sect, nation, ethnicity and common religion.

The Bush administration, thus, blindly and arrogantly entered a war, which would inevitably result in a ceaseless Arab fight to regain their lost honour, dignity, pride, and to exact revenge upon an infidel who has dared to so grievously injure it. The shame dimension of the conflict rules out a negotiated settlement. The fight for regaining honour cannot be compromised, traded or negotiated; it can only be one to the death. Therefore, psycho-culturally, the U.S. has entered an un-winnable and endless war, so long as it refuses to back down.

The Administration was three times blind to these subterranean forces at work and was taken in by their own initial and fictitious victory following the initial shock of invasion. They were doubly taken aback by the new opposition, which emerged in multifarious forms triggered by the overwhelming sense of humiliation felt and the Pandora's Box of unresolved internal grievances and injuries, the retribution of which has lain unsatisfied for generations and even centuries. This blindness to reality, which continued throughout the war, was epitomized in the first period, when Bush blissfully announced, in a typical act of crude bravado that "all combat operations" had ended, under the banner of "Mission Accomplished" on an aircraft carrier in 2003!