Ali has challenged fellow Iraqi blogger "Riverbend" on her latest anti-American screed's latitude with the truth, while defending — against annoyed leftists — an Iraqi's right to agree with those who liberated him.

PRETENDING: Matthew Scully:

Finally there is Mr. Kerry's charge that, among all the other miscalculations, "The administration told us we'd be greeted as liberators. They were wrong." Actually, that is exactly how they were greeted [the most striking examples here, here, here, here and here], and none of the setbacks since then change this fact. For a presidential candidate to speak scornfully of the claim that American and allied forces liberated that country is to play, falsely and perversely, into the idea that the Iraqi people are unfit for self-government and best left to their fate.

"Perverse" is exactly the right word. In his landmark didacticism Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis spoke of forgiveness and the danger of holding one's enemies to deliberately impossible standards:

[I]t is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed forever in a universe of pure hatred.

We have a perfect example of that dogma today, from this weblog (the latest example I noted yesterday):

Now, there's hardly anything dedicated leftists detest more than America as America or military action. Just imagine what they'd do when faced with American-led military force ensuring peace by liberating the Third World — and slowly succeeding. Have an idea? In fact, we've already found out: leftists decided to drop the Third World from their list of concerns to better oppose us.

There's another passage I found when looking up the first:

War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, though I think he is entirely mistaken. What I cannot understand is this sort of semipacifism you get nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have to fight, you ought to do it with a long face and as if you were ashamed of it.

"A long face." Figurative and literal. John Kerry, the left and the plain foolish embody disheartenment, which sits along with resentment as ghastly jamb figures abreast the doorway to hatred and ruin.