I disagree.

I think the root of our failure to win the hearts of the Iraqi Arabs is to be found in very term "cake-walk" itself.   The original "cake-walk" was a sort of goofy exaggerated strut first perfected by African slaves in the American south.  And, although it soon became an art form in itself, it  was originally developed as a parody of the prideful way of walking displayed by their white masters on public occasions.

So if we see the "cake-walk" as a symbol of the hatred that our national persona (or at least part of it) can excite in a captive people then perhaps we can understand why our easy triumph over an Arab nation, and our presiding over the chaos that followed, contained the seeds of our miserable failure to win the hearts of the Arabs in Iraq or elsewhere.   The very fact of the "cake-walk" victory just hurt Arab pride too badly for them ever to accept it. 

And I don't think this attitude is so alien to the American character. Deep in our hearts most of us understand it perfectly well.