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"So the question is if:
1) we care more about the freedom of the Iraqi people than they do (something we could only have known in hindsight), and
2)we are not willing to wage total war until all opposition is removed,
than how can we possibly win there?

Well I think you see where I am getting at. General Sherman would probably agree with me. "

1.)The Iraqis have no experience with freedom and until last year had no hope of control over their future. Now, each day is new and bewildering to them, a little frightening I'm sure. They can take cautious, baby steps or run wild in the streets destroying private property like sports fans in this country do after the hometeam wins a big one.
2.)Well, yes, we could wage war like the animals we're trying to rid the world of but then we'd be just like them and that isn't the way Americans do things. We're waging an American style war, a 21st century war. Noone ever said it would be swift only that it must be done.

Sherman ? that old barbarian ? pffffft ! Yeah, right, he would have been right at home in Saddam's Elite Repubican Guard.

we'd be just like them and that isn't the way Americans do things. We're waging an American style war, a 21st century war.

In WWII we fire bombed Dresden and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki we did likewise. So yes, when pushed to it, Americans do these things. As far as the 21st century war you describe, I would feel better about it's success if there were a historical example of it working.