How Iraq Cost American in the World’s Eyes

By Anne Applebaum
The Washington Post
Tuesday, November 20, 2007; Page A17

Casualties are definitely down. Other places suddenly seem to need more urgent attention. News coverage is shrinking, as is public interest. All of which may help explain the breath of optimism one can now detect in Washington, and even in other places, about the war in Iraq. “It will all come right in the end; wait and see” is an expression I’ve heard more than once. Other versions of this include: “The surge is working” and “Why doesn’t the mainstream media tell the truth about our successes in Iraq?”

Though I don’t especially want to perpetuate any stereotypes about the mainstream media, I have to say that this optimism is totally unwarranted. Not because things aren’t improving in Iraq — it seems they are, at least for the moment — but because the collateral damage inflicted by the war on America’s relationships with the rest of the world is a lot deeper and broader than most Americans have realized. It isn’t just that the Iraq war invigorated the anti-Americanism that has always been latent pretty much everywhere. What’s worse is the fact that — however it all comes out in the end, however successful Iraqi democracy is a decade from now — our conduct of the war has disillusioned our natural friends and supporters and thrown a lasting shadow over our military and political competence. However it all comes out, the price we’ve paid is too high.

Read the rest:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/19/AR2007111901185.html?hpid=opinionsbox1