Getting out of the quaqmire

An op-ed piece in the New York Times makes the point that the US (and the West more generally) doesn't at the moment have the ability to provide a counter-story to al-Qaeda's in the Muslim world. Why not?

Realistically, we cannot deploy a counter-narrative - one that emphasizes that we are a benign superpower - so long as our troops are in Iraq. That will make it difficult to separate moderates from extremists, as an ideological struggle requires. We must focus more on developing that story and getting out of Iraq with the least damage to our interests and less on the phony truce offers of a guileful enemy.