Tom, the active war as you call it is, as far as I know it, not between us and the Iraqis but instead between factions of Iraq themselves. Most of our casualties are simply the result of being in the middle of it all.

A couple of posts above you had the population of Iraq rising up against American troops to kill them. Now, we're just in the crossfire as they shoot at each other. Make up your mind.

Better yet, start doing some research and figure out what's actually going on over there.

Call it what you like, but a substantial part of the world will breathe a collective sigh of relief over us suddenly coming to our senses. That majority of world citizens would be wise then to regain the respect we used to command in the foreign policy arena.

When we crawl out of Iraq, the last thing the "rest of the world" is going to feel for us is respect.

As if they approved of our foreign policies before Iraq. Has EVERYONE forgotten the Cold War?

But then, such nations have always been more comfortable feeling pity and contempt for the U.S., which is why they got so angry when we actually stood up and did something, both recently, and during the latter parts of the Cold War. Not that they ever would do anything, having been protected from harm mostly by the U.S. for well over half a century.

For those opportunists around the world that see us as weaker because our democracy and rule of law was suddenly rekindled, all I can say is "consider the source".

It isn't their "opinions" that are going to be the problem. If all we had ever had to worry about was al Qaeda's or others' opinion of us, this would never have been an issue.