They hand out soccer balls to children and halt traffic so elderly people can safely cross busy streets. They high-five bemused youngsters who follow them everywhere.
In Baghdad and throughout Iraq, the US military is taking steps big and small to win over Iraqis, many of whom remain suspicious of American intentions. It's part of a carrot-and-stick policy designed to root out insurgents who've been increasing attacks on Americans -- while at the same time assuring Iraqis that America means well.
On the surface, America's charm offensive seems to be doing well -- with children, teenagers and even some adults thrilled by the presence of the Americans, sometimes treating them like celebrities.
But the campaign is doing little to calm anti-US sentiment and is highlighting the huge cultural gap between Iraqis and Americans -- a gap that some Iraqis believe no act of magnanimity or amount of cultural sensitivity can bridge.
From an Iraqi viewpoint, the two sides are oceans apart -- a conservative and proud people who are deeply conscious of their Arab and Muslim heritage and an occupying army that represents a faraway superpower seen in Iraq as arrogant, untrustworthy, an enemy of Islam and a friend of archenemy Israel.
In Fallujah, a city west of Baghdad where resentment of the US became intense after 18 people were shot dead by US soldiers in April, American forces followed up on raids this week against suspected hideouts of hard-core Saddam Hussein loyalists with goodwill gestures across the city of 200,000 people.
They handed out meals to school teachers who hadn't been paid, cleared land for use as soccer fields, removed rotting garbage and gave teddy bears to children.
"This is American food. It isn't Iraqi," protested Abdel-Wahid Mansour, head of the Fallujah education district as soldiers unloaded 2,000 vegetarian meals for his teachers.
"I don't deal with Americans and we don't need their food," he said.
Every one of the female teachers at Fallujah's Martyr Abed Fazaa primary school for girls wears a scarf, a sign of Islamic piety. They all dismissed as unnecessary an American gift of blackboards and ceiling fans for the 634-pupil school.
Sensing their resentment of his American employers, an Iraqi male translator sought to reassure them.
"God has sent these men from heaven to help us," he said.
They remained unmoved.
In Baghdad, soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division said they had been invited to "clean up" the area outside a mosque housing the tomb of Imam Mousa Kazim, a revered Shiite saint.
Soon after their arrival in the middle of the month, the bustling commercial area became the most intensive theater of spontaneous interaction between US troops and ordinary Iraqis in Baghdad.
Constantly sweating in Baghdad's brutal summer heat, the men of the 82nd stopped traffic for old women to cross the street, ordered double-parking motorists to move on and endured, with surprisingly good humor, the swarms of children and teenagers who won't leave them alone.
They obliged passers-by who wanted to pose next to them for photographs and administered first aid to a boy with a cut on his hand. In a society that was notorious for its corruption under Saddam, they sought to demonstrate the notion of one law for everyone, admonishing a police officer in front of bemused onlookers for leaving his car in a no-park zone.
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