According to a New York Times article on the CNN site, the American troops got a great welcome in Baghdad. They should enjoy it while it lasts. The Northern Ireland experience shows that no one likes having foreign troops marching around their home town, even if they were sent over to defend your interests.

It must be very hard to be a soldier in a foreign country, especially for the Americans in Iraq. There is a crazy political situation going on around them which they don’t understand and which they don’t really have anything to do with. At the same time, law and order is deteriorating. The soldiers have obviously been told not to try to stop this craziness, because the military forces don’t have the manpower to do proper peacekeeping.