This lesson is lost on the Bush administration, which senselessly alienated Iran in 2002, when moderates had the upper hand there and were cooperating in Afghanistan, and reversed decades of US policy by insisting that any Middle East settlement must accept changed “realities on the ground” in the West Bank. The administration seems bent on herding adversaries together – transforming Samuel Huntington’s “clash-of-civilizations” dystopia into a self-fulfilling prophecy.