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Between cramming for finals, preparing for prom and graduating, Shauna Fleming crisscrossed the country, visited the Pentagon, threw out the first pitch at a baseball game and filmed a television advertising campaign.

Not a bad way to finish high school.

Three years ago, the Orange County student started the "A Million Thanks" letter-writing campaign for U.S. troops fighting overseas. After tripling her expectations, she is starting a nonprofit organization that grants wishes to wounded soldiers.

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A surprising surge of optimism has just bubbled up from America's famously circumspect and straight-talking top military man in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus. Next came a not-surprising rush to rebuke by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid.

Because we all know where this is going - namely, that September report from Petraeus on whether the so-called troop surge is working - it is important to first note that the Iraq War has produced a historic shift: The unprecedented generalization of the Iraq war, a shift historians may judge as one of the few good outcomes of this badly bungled mission that could end with America losing the war it won.

By "generalization," we are not talking about glib statements from spokesmen, pols or pundits. (Although there has been no shortage of those in this war that began with a quick victory but evolved into an un-won peace that has dragged on longer than World War II.) The "generalization" we are focusing on is about America's military generals and the unprecedented way they have emerged to tell us tough truths we needed to hear. Truths about miscalculations, misperceptions, deceptions and blunders that civilian policymakers committed and were hell-bent to hide.

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WASHINGTON (AP) Despite rising civilian deaths in Afghanistan's counter-terror war - and rising criticism - a U.S. general suggested Tuesday that coalition commanders do not need to change the way they operate.

"We think the procedures that we have in place are good," Brig. Gen. Joseph Votel told a Pentagon press conference. "They work, they help us minimize the effects" on civilians, he said.

A count by the United Nations and an umbrella organization of Afghan and international aid groups shows that in the first five months of this year, the number of civilians killed by international forces was roughly equal to the number killed by insurgents. An Associated Press count for 2007 based on figures from Afghan and international officials found that while militants killed 178 civilians in attacks through June 23, Western forces killed 203.

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It's disappointing -- and shocking -- to see top generals in Iraq openly lamenting the inadequacies of the Iraqi security forces.

It shows how deep the problems are.

Worse, it shines a spotlight on the question that illuminates what has been wrong with the Iraq effort all along: What's the plan?

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The anger deflected from what, in retrospect, was an embryonic variant of the anti-immigration hostility we're seeing today and the backlash it's provoking among immigrants. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the great historian who died four months ago, diagnosed the hostility in "The Disuniting of America," his 1992 book on multiculturalism: "When old-line Americans, for example, treat people of other nationalities and races as if they were indigestible elements to be shunned and barred, they must not be...

Earlier this month the Gallup Organization released its latest survey of Americans' confidence in their institutions (See box). The numbers are not too different from what they were 10 years ago, but news stories focused on one item: Congress' all-time low rating. Conservatives gloated with we-told-you-so sophomorism, Democrats having won back Congress in November. But the gloaters miss the point.

Americans are in a lecturing mood about immigrants refusing to integrate. But it's "old-line Americans" who are disassociating from their own democratic institutions, whether it's the three branches of government, the Fourth Estate, the criminal justice system or the educational system.

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