Yes, Yes, and yes.

I was not in contact with the “ruling class”, Kathy. I leave that to the State Department and the Generals.
Everyday Iraqis LIKE their prospects. They don't like the current situation and are ready for us to leave., but they acknowledge our contributions.

Since the 1960s, the radicalized Left has not only expected perfection (as it defines) of the USA, but has been obscessed with fault-finding and disparaging the USA (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the West; this is a Western, not only a US, phenemenon).

That's not quite right…

Most of us who are critical of the US watch the media produced by the US and assumed that it reflected reality, when we got a little older we did a compare and contrast essay in our minds. Rarely if ever did the reality match the propaganda, once in a blue moon it was better, but most of the time it didn't even come close to it.

The propagandist told us that the US was in favor of peace, democracy and prosperity. In reality, we have overthrown Democratic regimes (Mossadeq, Arbenz, Sukarno, Allende, etc..)like they were going out of style, we have supported more Dictatorships (Shah of Iran, Saudi Royalty, Mubarak, Pinochet, Franco, Salazar, Somoza, the Greek Colonels ) than I care to name (pretty much any non-communist mass murdering scumbag that has walked on the face of this earth in the last fifty years), we have started more wars(Korea, Vietnam, Iraq twice, Afghanistan twice, Granada, Panama ) than any other country in the last fifty years and our economic policies where they have been exported (Latin America & other third world countries) have been a humanitarian disaster.

So much for Democracy, Prosperity and Peace.

The only upside that I can see, is that our economic elites are in the process of imposing all those fine policies upon the US population.

Since the 1960s, the radicalized Left has not only expected perfection (as it defines) of the USA, but has been obscessed with fault-finding and disparaging the USA (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the West; this is a Western, not only a US, phenemenon). It is pathogical — diseased, self-loathing variation of nihilistic tendencies — by definition.

The above is rude and boorish in tone and inaccurate in substance. Take a look at nicrivera's comment addressed to you, concerning me, the first line of which begins, “I think we need to differentiate…” You will notice that nicrivera refers to me throughout that comment by my given name. I think that must have been a deliberate choice, because I just checked, and I did not see the personal pronoun “she” anywhere. That is a (maybe not the only, but *a*) respectful way to refer to a specific third person when that third person is privy to the discussion. Although I haven't told nicrivera thus far, I will say now that I appreciate it. It's actually a courtesy I might not have noticed if I had not seen the opposite treatment.

Second, your stated position that I hold the U.S. responsible for the “bombs that go off” is exactly what I am talking about. Do you blame the US for 9/11 therefore? Do you excuse any and all killings of innocent, third-party civilians by terrorists pissed at US policy as justifiable? Your statement sure seems to say you do, and absolutely justifies my criticism of your being anti-American.

You seem to only see the bad that America has indeed done, and still does, but never the good, and you do so while overlooking or even as you just did justifying the bad that others do as 'understandable'. I find that reprehensible, and again anti-America.

Finally, do I want America to have global economic and military dominance, be the indispensable nation, a beacon of freedom and enlightenment, and a shining city on the hill? You bet. It sure beats giving that title away freely to Russia or China or India (or Iran).

Do I think we are perfect? Hell no. But overall we are a damn sight better than the others you seem to feel are morally superior to us. You cannot expect perfection; we do not live in a world of saints, and I look at the ledger overall as America being a positive, not negative, net influence on world affairs.

Despite the laughable hypocrisy of your snark, I will say that I do accept the validity of your own direct observations and perceptions in Iraq. But I do have a couple of caveats.

First, unless you have had personal conversations with all 28 million -plus Iraqis, you cannot say that “the Iraqi people are overwhelmingly enjoying that very progress.” How many ordinary Iraqis (meaning, Iraqis not part of the ruling class or directly associated with the U.S. military) that you know or have spoken with one on one have told you Iraq has made progress because of the U.S. presence, and that they “like” and are “enjoying that very progress”? Did you speak to these Iraqis in their own language (Arabic, I assume)? Do you think they might have been telling you what they thought you wanted to hear?

Please understand: I am not trying to tell you you're lying or not being honest when I ask these questions. I am merely trying to find out if you have considered them in weighing what Iraqis have told you and what you have observed.

My second caveat is that, although the Iraqis you met and spoke with may very well think Iraq has made progress under U.S. occupation and be enjoying it, you are only one person. Many other observers — including other Americans like yourself who have served in Iraq — have come away with impressions and perceptions quite different from yours. Do you accept the validity of their descriptions?

Your claim that I “claim every ill in the world and every bomb that goes off is America's fault” is clearly nonsense. At best, it's a gross exaggeration; at worst, it's a deliberate, knowing falsehood. I criticize U.S. government policies that in my view are wrong and/or harmful and therefore need to be criticized, and I hold the U.S. responsible for the “bombs that go off” when the U.S. is in fact responsible for the conditions and circumstances that led to the bombs going off.

As it happens, the U.S. is actually responsible, to varying degrees, for much of the bad stuff that goes on in the world because our foreign policy since the end of World War II has been, in general, abysmal. We can argue over specific policies and whether they are helpful or harmful, but what we cannot do is support the idea of “American exceptionalism,” and then claim that we are not to blame for the negative effects of our own policies and actions. We cannot simultaneously acknowledge and laud the fact that the U.S. has global economic and military dominance in the world and that it should ever be so and that our global policies should be directed toward maintaining and increasing that dominance, and insist that our global dominance has no adverse effects at all on the rest of the world. You and others like you want to believe that everything we do in the world is good for the world, that we're the indispensable nation, that we're a beacon of freedom and enlightenment, that we're that shining city on the hill — but then when you see evidence that this is, at the least, not entirely true, you bitterly and angrily blame and attack the messengers.

You cannot have it both ways, AR. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too. If you want to believe that the U.S. is the most important nation in the world and that it is our right to act in the world in pursuit of our interests regardless of the consequences for others, then you cannot logically or justifiably or rationally claim that when bad things happen on our watch, and those bad things are pointed out, that constitutes “blaming America first” or “blaming America for everything bad that happens.” You want America to BE first in the world, while rejecting all of the unwelcome consequences of being first in the world. That's a ridiculous, untenable position, and it's intellectually dishonest of you to blame me for pointing it out.

As a closing note, I would like to request that you stop referring to me in this comments section as “SHE.” I read and contribute to these comments, as you may be aware. I am here. Please do not refer to me in the third person.

Thank you.

Criticizing the government or its policies is one thing, and quite fair game; claiming every ill in the world and every bomb that goes off is America's fault is quite another. It is the latter that she engages in, and that I object to, and that I take issue with.

This is much like the Obama Administration claiming that it is waiting for the elections in Kabul to go through prior to making a decision on more troops. That decision has already been made. They are postponing that decision's public release until after AMERICAN elections. Both Bush and Obama are wrong in that tactic. It's dishonest. Politics cannot and should not be a part of ANY decision dealing with our troops. We supposedly learned that lesson in Vietnam. But the American attention span being short, perhaps they wish to learn that lesson again. I won't put up with that. None of us should.

My bad, Vera. Wasn't attempting to insult your intelligence. It's easy to get in “corrective mode” when I see many others use illogical arguments and misuse words for their own spin. Sorry again.

Some of us have actually been there, Kathy. I've spent 3 years of my life there. I can tell you without bias that the Iraqi people are overwhelmingly enjoying that very progress. They like it. They know that there is much remaining to do to bring Iraq up to a productive nation in the world economy. They also feel that, once we leave, it will most likely get better. That's why the populace wants us to withdraw.

Should I presume that you will not accept the above description since it does not support your liberal agenda? I hope that is not the case.

I think we need to differentiate between hating America and hating the American government policies.

Kathy has obviously been very critical of America's foreign policy, as have I. Perhaps more than is necessary in your view. But the government is not America. One can love America without liking its government's policies.

Conservatives criticize government policies all the time when it comes to domestic issues, and I would assume that conservatives do not believe themselves to hate America for doing so. Yet conservatives have a completely different set of standards when it comes to foreign policy. A liberal/progressive (or even paleoconservative or libertarian) who criticizes foreign policy with as much passion as a conservative who criticizes domestic policy is deemed to hate America. The knee-jerk adultation of government by conservatives whenever it comes to the military or foreign policy is baffling considering how much they claim to support smaller government.

Ironically, when it comes to domestic policies, Kathy has actually been very supportive of the government (too much, in my opinion). I suppose, by your standards, Kathy must really love America when it comes to domestic issues.

Government is government.

I would say that the surge helped (along with other conditions on the ground as you noted) bring us much closer to success in our mission, which I would define as overthrowing a tyrannical regime which we thought had WMDs (an inexcusable intelligence mistake, the blame for which is shared by the Bush administration, the intelligence community, the media, and let's not forget Saddam himself whose own generals thought he had the stuff) and replacing it with a stable democracy. However, the cost of this “success” has been much greater than what was anticipated, as I think I've heard even the Bush administration say. So, even if we say that we have succeeded or are close to succeeding in Iraq, that doesn't necessarily mean that it was worth the cost, which is why I think the war was a mistake even while I would agree with your unnamed Bush administration official that we are close to something resembling success now.

So, I'm guess you'd phrase things a bit differently, and maybe you think we are farther away from “success” than I do, but in general I don't think we're too far apart on the question of whether the Iraq war was a mistake.

“or, put slightly differently, the Bush administration claimed that the surge allowed the U.S. to win the war, to declare victory.”

Personally, questions of “win” or “victory” sound pretty shallow to me, as I'm guessing you'd agree by your tone. Things aren't that black and white. So, yes, to the extend that a government official is claiming “victory”, or the extent that the Bush administration claims any credit for doing anything other than successful damage control, it is unwarranted. My argument is just that the damage control known as the surge has been successful so far and has worked as advertised, contrary to your post.

(on a side note: our military personnel–not the administration–has earned the right to call their efforts “victorious” if they so choose. They are victors insofar as they have overcome the monumental challenges that they were called upon to face, regardless of our debate about whether the war itself was justified or worth the cost. Anyway, this is tangential to our discussion, but I wanted to be clear about that).

Sounds reasonable, but here's the problem I have with that statement: The surge was intended as a solution to a problem that the U.S. created in the first place. So, to my way of thinking. what we did in the surge was clean up the mess we made. (Although we didn't even really do that, but that's what the idea behind the surge was about.) Now, if the Bush administration had been honest about this point, it would have been one thing. Cleaning up your mess is generally considered highly appropriate and desirable. But the Bush administration did something completely different. It claimed that, by reducing the level of violence, the surge enabled the U.S. to succeed in its mission in Iraq — or, put slightly differently, the Bush administration claimed that the surge allowed the U.S. to win the war, to declare victory.

That is what I find so offensive. That, and the unseemly credit-hogging by the Bush administration on behalf of the U.S. military, which completely ignored the fact that there would not have been, could not have been, a surge, if Sunni tribal leaders had not decided it served their interests to cooperate with the U.S. military. And if I'm remembering correctly, the latter preceded the former; i.e., the idea for the surge grew in part out of the Sunni tribal leaders having put out feelers to the U.S. military. And, in addition, a third reality that the Bush administration ignored was the extent to which the sectarian violence had already succeeded in creating ethnically “pure” neighborhoods in which everyone who was not part of the desired group had already been killed or forced to flee.

I was just objecting to the false idea that we funded the Iran Iraq war.

Not only did we fund the Iraqis, we also sold weapons to the Iranians…

Insurgencies that are contained in one country are almost always defeated.

Care to make a list of Insurgencies that have been defeated by outsiders since the end of WWII, hell that have been defeated period that did not involve genocide…

Hell, if you have AK47, RPGs, Semtex and the passive support of the local population an insurgency can run on for decades on end… see Palestine, Lebanon, Vietnam, Algeria, East Timor, Sri Lanka ( that one seems to be ending in a nice little genocide).

The poll I cited didn't have Iraqis saying things were “better”, they said things were “quite good” or “very good”. “Good” certainly is a vague term, but not a less relative than “better”. It is true, however, that many more Iraqis say things are going “good” than they said in 2007, which is why we can say that things are “better”.

“It also should be obvious that telling a pollster things are better in 2008 or 2009 than they were in 2005 or 2006 does not mean Iraqis think the invasion and occupation itself was a good thing”

Absolutely. And the numbers in the poll I linked to point that out. The majority think that is was bad that the US invaded Iraq (although it is not an overwhelming majority), and I agree with them. But that is irrelevant to the question of whether the surge has improved the situation or not.