The day that Baghdad fell to Tommy Franks, successor to Alexander of Macedon, there were celebrations in America. The most interesting one was in the town of Deerborn, Michigan, where the largest population of Arabs and Americans of Arab descent live. While they danced in the streets and waved the stars and stripes, one could not help thinking that Washington needs these people now more than ever.
America's immigrant heritage, if it means anything at all in international diplomacy, means that the US has someone available to its embassy, army or media who has cousins on the other side. While at its worst, it leads to concentration camps like Manzanara for Japanese-Americans in the 1940s, at its best, it provides America with an inside track on building bridges to other societies.
There is no reason for such a country to ever run short of translators. There is no reason for such a country to ever lack broadcasters to other cultures. There is no reason for Americans to have an image of unsophisticated white trash, when there are other sorts of Yankees around. The State Department ought to have recruited from Deerborn years ago.
If America does have any value to the rest of the world beyond the purely material, it is its ideal (not always achieved) that its people are willing to try to tolerate each other. The Arabs of Deerborn, the American Arabs, are needed by their country, but one wonders if their country is smart enough to ask for their help. So far, the record is not impressive. Yet just imagine if the military governor of Iraq was a Muslim who came up through the ranks to wear those stars.