Why don’t Iraqis like us?

During World War II, my father was the mayor of a small French mountain village, next to the Swiss border. This area of the Alps was under German occupation and my dad had to interact with the Wehrmacht on a daily basis and on a vast number of issues, ranging from signage to local information, whereabouts of resistance forces, over-border trafficking and tracking down community members that should be sent to German labor camps.

On the surface, my father was “nice” to the occupying forces and would always tell them what they wanted to hear. Of course, language barriers didn't help communication. As soon the Germans turned their backs, my dad was risking his life undoing what he had been ordered to, forging false ID cards, guiding Jews over the mountains into Switzerland, and doing whatever the daily situation dictated. He was clearly polarized against the Germans and so was the entire population.

When I see what goes on in Iraq today, I can’t help but draw a parallel with that experience. For every Iraqi including their new police and army, American forces will always be seen as the ugly occupiers (causing widespread destruction, initiating forced entries, being culturally clueless). Iraqis quickly saw through our ousting Saddam as a pretense, and the Abu Ghraib disaster sealed our credibility once and for all. Those we call insurgents and terrorists are seen as resistance forces by the populace and receive their full support.

Most Iraqis would rather take the risk to die from a sectarian explosion than see us win. Arabic is so different from English that it makes communication sketchy at best; the same is true of undifferentiated attire between “good” and “bad” guys, they are no uniforms to tell them apart! We have to be incredibly naïve to believe that some Iraqis “like us” or are willing to work with us. It seems that the more our forces get involved, the more they antagonize the local population. Our training of the police and the army has just benefited the multiplication of effective militia and our troops appear as powerless witnesses of a situation spiraling out of control.

The recent mass demonstration in Najaf and most polls show that the number one wish of Iraqis that are not elected officials is to see us pack up and leave as soon as humanely possible…