So it is refreshing to read this in the New York Times on one of their blogs by one of their employees. He fled the violence that exploded in 2006 and has returned, finding it surprisingly safe and hopeful:
Will it stay safe or not?
I guess that all depends on the American troops, since we will not have qualified Iraqi forces soon. Although most Iraqi forces are sincere you find some have been infiltrated by groups of gunmen and sectarian people who made the mess all around us.
So we still need the Americans because if they intend to leave, there will be something like a hurricane which will extract everything - people, buildings and even trees. Everything that has happened and all that safety will be past, just like a sweet dream.
As people say in my neighborhood: “The Americans are now Ansar al Sunna.” Protectors of the Sunni.
Before 2003 during the long containment of Saddam after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, we protected the Kurds from the Saddam-led Sunni Arabs.
In 2003, when we invaded Saddam's Iraq, we essentially protected the Shias from the Sunni Arabs led by Saddam. And now, we protect the Sunni Arabs, who have given up their dreams of ruling Iraq which was driven at least in part by their fear of retribution from their former victims.
Now, after the surge brought the Sunni Arabs in from the cold, they hope that joining the fight against jihadis and Iranians will help them rejoin Iraq. And the Sunni Arabs need us there until the day that their former victims no longer burn for revenge.
Now we are protecting all Iraqis. Will our Left finally stop insisting that we are "occupying" Iraq?
Will our Left at long last recoil from their urge to betray the growing number of Iraqis who look to us to help them preserve their safety and future?
We can be proud of what we are accomplishing in Iraq. Let's not abandon these people.
