PORTLAND, Oregon, June 6 (AScribe Newswire) -- My brother and I disagree about the Iraq war. He is a corporate VP in the heartland, I am a professor at a West Coast college. Still, as Iranian Americans, neither of us has any illusions about the former Iraqi regime, and we have our common list of clueless things Americans have said both for and against the war. To be specific:

Anyone who thought that Iraq's army could withstand American might for long was clueless. Previous military engagements with Iraq and Iran lasted no more than two months.

Even so, anyone who thought that the Iraqi army would not fight, that there wouldn't be street fighting or major civilian casualties, was deeply unrealistic. Move an army and you kill innocent people.

Anyone who thought that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq didn't know their Saddam. Not nuclear bombs or Scuds perhaps, or even weapons, but certainly chemical and biological materials.

But anyone who thought that finding these materials afterwards "answered" for the war wasn't listening. For the main counter-argument was that the Iraqi regime was, as we now know, a house of cards. With enough time and pressure, UNMOVIC would find the materials and a war was not worth the deaths of innocents.

Anyone who thought that the Iraqis would not be happy to be rid of Saddam Hussayn was pretty clueless. Yet anyone who imagined that Iraqis would be welcoming Americans with flowers everywhere needed a reality check. And certainly anyone who did not think Iraq would descend rapidly into lawlessness and settling old scores really had really been sleeping through history classes.

From the start, my brother and I focused on two issues, and one of them was settled before the first bomb dropped. This administration's determination to pursue a war, regardless of its justification, changed international institutions and the perception of the United States. It is seriously questionable whether either will ever return to what they were. My brother does not think this matters; I do. But we agree that, like the early days of the Cold War, no one can count on old truths.

The other issue is whether Iraq counts as a "success." Some will prefer the narrow standard of military victory, distinguishing that from nation-building, which is something else. Others will not draw the distinction so clearly. They will sound like the nineteenth-century Russian officer who said that Iran could be conquered in a day, occupied in a month, and lost in a year.

Why does that matter? For 50 years, the United States pursued a doctrine of containment and deterrence. It is now changing that to a doctrine of pre-emption, perpetual pre-eminence, and, if necessary, nuclear first strikes. Iraq is the first test of this doctrine.

If Iraq does not descend into a low intensity war, a new doctrine will govern U.S. foreign policy. In politics, for better or worse, there is no easy argument against success. If Iraq does slip into chaos, then the new doctrine will be damaged, and in politics, failure brings its own penalty regardless of the correctness of one's cause.

My brother and I expect Americans will disagree now on how things are going in Iraq--not because Iraq's future matters, but because everyone's future is now at stake: the world as they want to see it.

But can Americans disagree on Iraq with fewer misleading soundbites than they did so recently? Are we, as my brother says, the most self-critical nation in the world? Our record so far has not been inspiring, but one can only hope that my brother is right.

- Darius Rejali is a political science professor at Reed College. He was recently named a 2003 "Scholar of Vision" by Carnegie Corporation of New York.