OxBlog

# Posted 2:24 AM by Ariel David Adesnik

THE IRAQIS HATE US: Well, at least this WaPo article says so. It seems, however, that everyone Ed Cody interviewed for the article is from Baghdad, which tends to be far more anti-American than either the Shi'ite south or the Kurdish north.

But what's really going on, I think, is that the polls which showed 80% of Iraqis have an unfavorable opinion of US troops have given reporters a license to write 80% negative stories. If the polls say 80% don't like American soldiers, then four out of five man-in-the-street quotations will be anti-American.

You see the same thing with polls in the US, although the split is rarely so dramatic. Anyhow, Ed Cody puts it this way in his article:

Since U.S. forces drove to Baghdad and overthrew President Saddam Hussein in April 2003, the 138,000 American soldiers stationed here have lost their status as liberators in the eyes of most Iraqis. Polling by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority has chronicled a steady souring of opinion, with the most recent surveys showing about 80 percent of Iraqis with an unfavorable opinion of U.S. troops.

While I don't think that a majority of Iraqis have positive feelings about our soldiers, it is interesting how Cody assumes they have lost their status as liberators. After all, a soldier can be both an occupier and a liberator, much as our soldiers now are.

But the more important point is that Cody and numerous others misinterpret the polls. Most Iraqis think they are better off since the invasion and even more Iraqis expect things to get better in years to come. In addition, 50% of Iraqis expect their nation to become democratic.

From where I stand, that constitutes a powerful albeit implicit acknowledgement that American soldiers are liberators as well as occupiers. The majority of Iraqis may not be happy with the way Americans treat them day to day, but they haven't forgotten who it was that toppled Saddam and who will oversee the transition to democracy.

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