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What you say is obviously true. But we have to keep in mind the game plan was for the Iraqi people to see the US and Coalition forces as positive protectors of their rights and religious believes while roaming about to kill the ali babba that killed so many Iraq citizens. It has been a real juggling act between raw force and trying to appear as trusted occupiers.
Many criticize Bremmer on upward, but when we take pains to carefully view the whole strategic plan, one may find the decisions taken over the long run have produced a Iraqi citizentry that most often trusts the US military and now see their own forces being fair minded to a large degree.
We want a Iraq that joins the western democracies and become honest brokers/allies in the GWOT as well as a future key producer of oil/gas.
We must balance the equations carefully. The change of status in Iraq has taken place not because we hammered hundreds of towns and cities to dust, but because we painfully built up a new Iraqi military and police and forced their elected central government leadership to finally take the reins and bring their country under control. Most Iraqi have seen how fair minded the western world's military forces can be. It is hard to fathom some Sunni or Shia father with wife and children who has been protected from a bunch of blood thirsty goons, by US forces now think unkindly of us.
Let us keep in mind. The US and Coalition forces invaded Iraq not to kill Iraqi off. But to remove a brutal dictator that was evil toward his people, sponsored terrorism outright, had plans to resurrect a nuclear program, and showed the world he had plans of causing great unrest in the ME. His invasion of Kuwait obviously being one good example of what he intended to do over the long run.

The change of status in Iraq has taken place not because we hammered hundreds of towns and cities to dust, but because we painfully built up a new Iraqi military and police and forced their elected central government leadership to finally take the reins and bring their country under control. Most Iraqi have seen how fair minded the western world's military forces can be. It is hard to fathom some Sunni or Shia father with wife and children who has been protected from a bunch of blood thirsty goons, by US forces now think unkindly of us.

I don't think anyone would have wanted to raze them to the ground, but to fail to document and pursue -- and we have the combat-camera footages to verify -- those insurgents that did hide and assault from mosques gave them more power than we gained in respect, IMHO. We finally did announce and hit them, but had to get approvals from well upstream while the troops in contact took severe injuries and unwarranted deaths.

Part of that harkens back to my own service, where the Admiral had to get approval from Bobby [very]Strange Macnamara and his Whiz-Kid minions to open fire on the beach in support of the Marines our task-force had landed. He was denied, and I always wondered if we might not have had as many bodybags come back had we done that.

Even though the great majority of the Iraqi's now approve and support the actions we've taken, I'm under no illusion that they will change their ways in the future. The socialist-style mindset, as against the individual cooperative attitude, is too entrenched in their history and their religion.