Every opponent the US has faced yet have believed the above, starting with George III and lately ending with Saddam Hussein. Thus far, they have been uniformly wrong--mistaking a wish to be let alone with with an inability to fight.
See the thread on "The Jacksonian Tradition:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/845102/posts
for the best explanation as to why that I have yet seen.
Remains to be if Saddam is wrong.
Well, except for the Vietnamese communists. But then again they had many allies here, paid allies in some cases, fellow travelers and usefull idiots in others, but many in the media. Those "allies" of the perpetrators of reducation camps and the killing fields are still there in the media and most especially in the entertainment industry.