History not learned or déjà vu all over again

In From Lebanon to Iraq and Back Leon Hadar tells us about the lessons that were not learned by the US in Lebanon and how that led to the foolish invasion of Iraq.
Does this sound familiar?

...when Israeli troops under the order of then Defense Minister Sharon invaded Lebanon in 1982 as part of a strategy to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from that country and to bring to power the Christian Phalangist militias, led by Bashir Gemayel, Israeli officials and pundits were predicting that a New Order was about to emerge in the Middle East: an alliance between the twin pro-Western and democratic states of Israel and Lebanon would lead to the weakening of the PLO and Syria and help trigger similar changes in the entire Middle East.

That was the dream, this is reality:

The Israelis did defeat the Syrian and Muslim Lebanese troops and achieved their goal of evicting Yasser Arafat and his PLO from Lebanon.

But Lebanon was not transformed into a stable democracy and an ally of the West and Israel. Instead, following the assassination of Gemayel and the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the country relapsed into another bloody civil war that forced the deployment of international peacekeeping troops, including American soldiers, and eventually to the return of Syrian occupying forces to impose order in the country.

Indeed, the main legacy of the 1982 Israeli invasion – in addition to close to 20,000 casualties – was to strengthen the power of the Shi'ite Muslims in Lebanon while turning them into long-term enemies of Israel and the United States and intensifying anti-American sentiments, including terrorism in the region.

So what we see here is that local powers will tell you what you want to hear to draw you in and then......

In reality, the local players, whether they are the Shi'ites and Kurds in Iraq, or the Maronites, Druze and Shi'ites in Lebanon regard their partnership with a power like the United States as nothing more than an ad-hoc arrangement aimed at advancing their particularistic interests in relation to other competing players in the region.

They might even be willing to quote Thomas Jefferson in exchange for American intervention on their side. But when an outsider like the US helps tip the balance in favor of its local partner or if that power fails to deliver the goods, the local player exposes its real agenda: trying to win one more fight in the neighborhood in which the spoils don't necessarily go to the good guys.

But tomorrow is another day, and in the next brawl our current "ally" might exchange one outsider for another. Hence Americans shouldn't have been "Shocked! Shocked! Shocked!" to learn that while enjoying a huge American stipend, their former ally Ahmad Chalabi was also providing tips to the Iranian security services.

And as for the flowers:

Indeed, the Americans should recall how the Shi'ites in Southern Lebanon, suffering under the domination of the PLO welcomed the Israelis with flowers in 1982 only to launch a bloody insurgency against them a few months later.

Lessons of history unlearned indeed.