The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review asks Daniel Pipes what he has learned from the Iraq war:
The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favour we gave them – to release them from the bondage of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. They have rapidly interpreted it as something they did and that we were incidental to it. They’ve more or less written us out of the picture.
Those ungrateful Iraqis should really be punished. The paper then asks how “we” will know if the occupation and invasion of Iraq is a success or failure:
Oh, it was a success. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. Beyond that is icing.
Pipes might not care about Iraqi deaths in a civil war, but “Coalition” troops will be increasingly targeted:
Two years after U.S. authorities ceremoniously declared Iraq to be sovereign again, top religious leaders say Iraqis remain under military occupation, have a right to fight foreign troops and still don’t govern themselves.
Their statements, made at the conclusion of a peace conference in London on Tuesday, provided a stamp of approval from Iraq’s most influential Sunni and Shiite Muslim clerics for their countrymen to step up attacks aimed at hastening the withdrawal of U.S., British and other troops.
Note that both Sunni and Shiite clerics are now joining together to condemn the US occupation and advocate fighting together.