So the American-installed prime minister of Iraq, Ayad Allawi, has reacted to the slaughter of 50 Iraqi soldiers with the statement that, as reported by the Associated Press from Baghdad, “There was great negligence on the part of some coalition forces. It seems there was sort of determination on doing Iraq and Iraqi people harm.” This is the sort of thing that Senator Kerry would immediately turn into a campaign commercial, accusing President Bush of “great negligence.” And no doubt the American left is going to pounce on Mr. Allawi’s comments, as Mr. Allawi must have calculated before making them. After all, America leads the coalition forces, and Mr. Bush is commander in chief, responsible for both their successes and their “great negligence.”

But before Mr. Kerry does seize on Mr. Allawi’s latest comments, he’ll have to account for the words of his own campaign aide, Joseph Lockhart, who responded to Mr. Allawi’s speech to Congress thanking America for liberating Iraq with the words, as quoted in Los Angeles Times, “The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips.” This, then, sadly, is the essence of the way the American left sees the rest of the world today. When a foreigner praises America as a liberator, he is denounced as a puppet. When he accuses America of “great negligence,” his words are taken as gospel. One could start to think that this is, at bottom, not about the underlying facts on the ground abroad, but about how some Americans feel about their own country.