I trust your family is safer in Mosul than in some of the regions to the south. Some guardsmen from this area are working near your community, and I've heard they are better with a backhoe than with an assault rifle. They're helping to rebuild.

The invasion and apparent victory last year were so swift, nobody, especially our president, thought we would be facing such intense fighting now. Most Americans had thought we were doing humanitarian work there, securing the country for the transition of power, building hospitals, schools and infrastructure.

Yes, we thought we would prepare your nation for democracy, without really knowing if it were possible for any country to be a dictatorship one year and self-governing the next. And I'm afraid we really didn't understand, perhaps, the nationalism the American presence and the fall of Saddam would ignite in the fundamentalist Muslim sects.

We like to believe in the separation of church and state, and sometimes it is hard for us to comprehend the intimate connection between the two in the Muslim world. The question, after we're gone, is whether there will be long-term stability without civil war and a relapse into authoritarianism. I have my doubts.

I can't imagine how you and others must have felt when seeing the horrid photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison. Most Americans were disgusted, though I have a feeling that the veterans of war understand that such abuses occur in war. Let's face it: You have to hate the enemy to readily kill him, and it's the military's job to develop that capacity for hate.

I've often wondered how Americans have been able to learn to hate another people, especially one that had done nothing to them to earn such hatred. What did the Vietnamese do to us? What did the Iraqis do to us to deserve such hatred?

You wouldn't believe how many Americans think that Iraq was somehow behind the 9/11 attacks, and, of course, we were convinced by our leaders that your country was teeming with weapons of mass destruction and some day would be poised to strike us.

Such falsehoods can help breed hate — and folly.

Do you realize we are spending more than $150 billion on your country? Granted, we are trying to rebuild what we destroyed in the invasion and bombings. And feeding 150,000 troops for a year isn't cheap. Then there's all the fuel, the contractors, the artillery.

The red ink will raise havoc with our economy, and that's when people will finally turn against the occupation. All the talk now is how great the economy is doing and there are all these jobs out there — but where? People look around them and find they are spending a lot more money just to get by.

Already we are paying more than $2 for a gallon of gasoline, and it's still going up. It's funny because one of the anti-war slogans has been "no blood for oil," because many believed one of our motives for invading your country was to get your oil. But oil prices are higher now than ever before.

More and more people are recognizing that the invasion was wrong and that the occupation may last a long time, while every day Americans and Iraqis are still being killed. I know our casualties pale compared to the number of Iraqis we've killed.

And the war was our idea, not yours. What were your people supposed to do, just lie down and welcome the invaders? Actually, some of our leaders said just that before the invasion.

I wish I could offer hope that our troops would be going home soon. Even as we choose new a leader later this year, it is not likely that the major opposition candidate will change course. That is, unless the growing popular sentiment to bring our soldiers home forces a change.

The real task ahead for you and other young people in Iraq will be to build a new, more-humane society on top of the one we've destroyed and also on top of the one we're trying to create. That's a bitter pill for a young generation to take, but one our own young people here in America ought to taste.

To begin, perhaps both our cultures need new gods in whose images there are no longer justifications for war, murder and brutality.

Cary Brunswick is managing editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at cary@thedailystar.com or (607) 432-1000, ext. 217.