Lessons not learned
"If you were an average Iraqi you'd be resisting too if Saddam's Fedayeen were threatening to behead your mother or sister in front of your house if you didn't. Alternatively, they might just announce that they have come to your village to execute all able-bodied males who refuse to take up arms to resist the invaders."
The claim that the average Iraqi is forced at gun-point to resist the American forces flies at the face of reality --- and the historical record. The reality is that Iraqis are resisting in a manner that indicates that it's not just Baath hard-liners or local thugs or whatever. You have average Iraqis taking pot shots with age old rifles! Then at the refugee centers at the borders of Iraq you have the incredible image of Iraqis going the wrong way, i.e. from outside the country towards the cities, in order "to fight off the invader".
History has also demonstrated quite emphatically that the people in a country will, usually, tend to resist an invader and to rally around their leadership, even when the invader presents better living or political conditions than their country's. This happened when Napoleon invaded the tyrannical regime of Spain; when the fascist regime of Greece was invaded by Italy in 1940, another fasist regime (instead of general indifference about the two regimes, the Greek people fought with astonishing vigor and self-sacrifice); when the Nazis invaded Stalin-tortured and famished Russia and the Ukraine; when the Vietnamese invaded war-torn and Khmer Rouge-infested Kampuchea. And so on. This is what you will also probably do even if the United States of America is ruled by a dictator.
American planning severely miscalculated the nationalist element in the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people they wanted to liberate. These folks are not all Saddam hard-liners, not by a long shot. Continue to deny reality at your peril.
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