Who are the good and bad guys in Iraq?

Deroy Murdock writing in The National Review has some insight.

“Death to America," read the English-language sign that a young Iraqi waved before a TV camera in mid-April. I wondered if he had any inkling what Americans and others were doing in his country before they were kidnapped or murdered.

Did this Iraqi know, for instance, that the four U.S. contractors who were killed, burned, and mutilated in Fallujah on March 30 neither built rape camps nor forcibly converted Muslims to Christianity? In fact, they protected food convoys so Iraqis might eat.

Was this, or any, Iraqi aware that the April 11 slaying of Danish businessman Henrik Frandsen ended his efforts to launch a sewage project?

Last month's abduction (and subsequent release) of Russian electrical workers kept them from repairing Iraqi power plants. The Kremlin's resulting evacuation of 800 Russian civilian contractors won't help, either.

U.S. truck driver Thomas Hamill, who Sunday escaped his terrorist captors for the safety of a U.S. military patrol, delivered zero fuel within Iraq after he was nabbed April 9 on Highway 10 outside Baghdad.

As a 550-pound truck bomb leveled the United Nations' Baghdad headquarters last August 22, diplomats were discussing how to clear landmines from Iraq's sands so citizens could walk freely without having their legs blown off. Instead, U.N. officials' legs were blown off. Terrorists killed 22 there that day.

From Basra to Berkeley, war critics denounce the Coalition forces' "occupation" of Iraq. They forget (or resent) that this remains a mission to modernize that nation and reverse 35 years of Baathist tyranny.

"We are trying to reconstruct the country," Great Britain's ever-eloquent prime minister Tony Blair told NBC's Tom Brokaw April 16. "Now, why are these people trying to stop us? They're trying to stop us because they can see that if we're allowed to continue this progress, then everything they stand for is defeated."

[...]

Amid this confusion, Iraqis and Americans alike need to be reminded that we and our Coalition partners are protagonists, trying against steep odds to bring freedom, peace and prosperity to a people tormented by more than three decades of Arab fascism. Our enemies impede food, sewage treatment, electricity, fuel, and even landmine removal.

At home and abroad — in English, Arabic, and every language in which America communicates — this message cannot be made clear enough.

You will not see any of this on the BBC.