The Prince of Darkness: Let Iraqis decide their fate

The "imperial", the "dark", the "cunning neo-con Iraq war monger" Richard Perle himself may surprise some of you by what he writes in today's New York Times:

THE most important thing we can do to help the Iraqis and ourselves is to recognize — and reverse — the seminal mistake that followed the quick destruction of Saddam Hussein’s murderous regime: the foolish (however well-meaning) and arrogant belief that we know better than the Iraqis how to rebuild their devastated society...

Stop! Iraqis know far better than we what makes sense for them. When administration officials and members of Congress, with their diplomatic, intelligence and political advisers — whose knowledge of Iraq is often recent, shallow and wrong — hector and lecture the Iraqis who are struggling to find a way forward, I wonder whether we have learned anything from our past mistakes.