A poignant snippet from a Strategy Page excerpt on Instapundit:

Although a minority in the country (about 20 percent of the population), the Sunni Arab tribes control most of central and western Iraq. The way the media covers the Sunni Arab violence, you get the impression that the entire country is in flames. But in most of Iraq, American civil affairs teams, and civilian aid workers report no violence or unrest at all. That, however is not news. Sunni Arab terrorists are news, and it's mostly Sunni Arabs who are being called on to fight the violence. Despite the attacks on local police (who are recruited locally) and civilians who support the government, resistance to "the resistance" is everywhere. Most Iraqis don't want the 20th-Century tyranny of Saddam, or the 14th-Century lifestyle of al Qaeda.

That is the comforting truth we know. What's bothersome is how easily the left conflates the few thousand terrorists and gangsters in Iraq with a population of 25 million — and writes the entire country off.