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Conflict in the middle east has been a building block of the nation from the beginning of it's existence (which, to use a common expression, was eons before the US was a twinkle in its daddy's eye').
And the Coalition forces are taking the brunt of its anger. This was recently chillingly demonstrated by virtue of a well-placed camera phone (or possibly video cam) during a house-searching exercise in a supervisory role with the Iraqi army.

In a scene reminiscent of a similar scene in Moghadishu, Somalia in 1993, where Corporal Jamie Smith took a bullet that severed his femoral artery, a sergeant, in this case, gets shot in the head by a sniper and his fellow warriors gather round to help. They can be heard calling the sergeant's name as they tried to keep him from dying on the spot. (They were successful but unfortunately the soldier died a short time later).
It has to be said in respect to the training these men went through, there was not one man who panicked. They all, with relative calm, carried on with SOP. A more dramatic example of the real cost of the war, I have yet to see. (Of course the soldier on the ground would see this every day).

It was a mistake to go there and the obvious comparisons with another famous conflict between the US and another are there for everyone to see.
There is no simple answer anymore, I'm afraid to say. The second the invasion began was the death knell of any simple answer. America should prepare herself for a long, bloody battle with this violent nation.
And Bush has announced another twenty thousand troops will be sent to the country; another twenty thousand targets. He can keep throwing men at this problem and they can keep dying. It's no solution. This is like no war in which America has ever been involved before.
For three decades in Northern Ireland, the British fought terrorism. But those terrorists although heinous in their own way, pale into insignificance beside their modern cousins. The size of this enemy is also frightening as it is not even restricted to the Middle East; it stretches from Bali to South Africa to the UK. And even more terrifying still the covertness. One never knows where they will strike next. Realistically, every Muslim is a potential enemy; the faith demands fervour.

What's the answer? Well, you can stay or you can leave. Those, essentially, are your choices. If you stay, you have to be prepared to spend many more billions and bring home many more bodies; if you leave, you suffer a humiliating defeat, and hand to the insurgents, a propaganda victory that will reverberate globally and from which the US may never full recover.

As I watch the daily news reports form the violence-soaked country, I'm torn between feeling sympathy for the young men thrust into this horror-filled theatre of war, and pragmatically accepting it's an expected duty of a soldier.
There is NO easy answer!

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