Hey, Morf. I'm going to have to disagree with you here on a few things. "Unlike Americans, Iraqis have an experiential knowledge of history." I understand what you're trying to say, but it is flawed in this sense: Iraqis today have not experienced what Iraqis did 100 years ago. And those did not experience what Iraqis did 100 years before that, and so on. They may have a knowledge of history, but they have not experienced it themselves. Today's Iraqis have experienced Saddam's regime however, and a large majority of them prefer what they now have. If these people truly wanted us out, they would be doing everything in their power to get rid of us. Instead they are not. It is foreign fighters and small pockets of resistance that have fought, like Zarqawi's forces and those of Al Sadr. Don't confuse them with the Iraqi people as a whole. They do not see us as imperialists...that is a term used by the left in our own country to vilify what we are doing there. "Like the Viet-namese, they have no qualms about fighting a hundred year war against any occupier." Another problem here...we were not occupying Vietnam and I don't think any of our troops then had a problem with seeing the war through. It was our politicians and the media that didn't have the stomach for it, much like today. "It would be easy to make the argument that the Soviet Union collapsed because of its sustained involvement in Afghanistan." This is just inaccurate. It may have played a very minor role, but the Soviet Union collapsed because they were communist. They could not keep up with the escalation of our military and weapons because they did not have a free market. They fell apart because they went bankrupt, not because of Afghanistan, but because they put all of their money into their nuclear programs and build up of of their military. And to answer your question: The only thing more un-American than being imperialist is accusing your nation of being so when they are not.