BEIRUT — In a com­ment in a “pre­vi­ous post”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000834.php, Farid said:

I have a friend liv­ing abroad who expressed to me exactly what you just did. Pre-election, Amer­i­cans were deemed to be help­less bystanders of a gov­ern­ment who has taken them hostage with its own agenda. Now they are seen as col­lab­o­ra­tors with it.

This com­ment res­onated strongly with me per­son­ally because the insur­gents in Iraq see all Americans/foreigners there, includ­ing we jour­nal­ists, as col­lab­o­ra­tors with the U.S. occu­pa­tion. I worry that the endorse­ment of the Amer­i­can peo­ple of the last three years will extend this atti­tude to the rest of the world. (Of course, “some people”:http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/ “don’t give a damn”:http://gmapalumni.org/chapomatic/index.php?p=425 about what the rest of the world thinks.)
While, obvi­ously, the French aren’t equiv­a­lent to Iraqi insur­gents, despite the polit­i­cal rhetoric of Craw­ford. How­ever, the feel­ing that every­one hates you and sees you as an active agent of their suf­fer­ing is a feel­ing I know well; most of the peo­ple read­ing this blog prob­a­bly don’t.
If the world’s pop­u­lace now sees the Amer­i­can peo­ple as “col­lab­o­ra­tors” with the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, wel­come to Bagh­dad. Trust me, you won’t like it.