This vision of relations will seem palatable to Americans and Iraqis who want to believe that all will be well after the withdrawal of U.S. troops. But the image is a mirage.

Hay's mission was to establish civil administration as the British took control of Iraq from Ottoman authorities.

If experience is anything to go by, the Marines who misbehaved in that video will be disciplined and punished—while those who are trying to exploit those images to undermine their mission never will be.

The U.S. military has developed into an effective counterinsurgency force under the leadership of Generals David Petraeus and Ray Odierno.

Operation Iraqi Freedom was but one campaign in what we have come to call "The Long War" in the Greater Middle East.

The current administration plan foresees thousands of American civilians going into Iraq in 2012. Of the many problems with this plan, a few stand out. We have been hearing about "civilian surges" into Iraq and Afghanistan for years, yet the nondefense contributions to such surges have been limited, slow to arrive, and painful to maintain.

Are our actions making America stronger or weaker in the eyes of our adversaries?

We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway—an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.