In America, the U.S. "surge" of additional troops to Baghdad is heralded as a success, and President Barack Obama has said he'll draw down American forces in Iraq and turn his attention to Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Iraq, however, what the U.S.-led invasion and occupation started is far from over.
Most Iraqis think that today's lower level of violence is the eye, not the end, of the storm, and that the decisive power struggles are just beginning. The U.S.-backed Iraqi government is widely regarded as an undeserving group of exiles who returned to Iraq on the backs of American tanks.
Over the weekend, fighting broke out between Sunni Muslims and Iraq's Shiite Muslim-led security forces, and it's unclear whether the security forces, still heavily backed by U.S. air and ground support, are loyal to their nation rather than their sect, tribe, town or ethnicity.
Many Iraqis, according to a detailed report from McClatchy, don't really think the US will pull its troops out. What's more, they don't think the US will ever get away from having drummed up the Iraq war in the first place. One Iraqi teacher interviewed may have hit the nail on the head: "History will not have mercy on America... I believe that it reached its peak, and now it is on its way down. America was hijacked from the Americans."
Kind of feels that way to many Americans, too.
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