Anything that's written now about the Iraq War isn't and never will be historical fiction. Well, I don't think that comparison does quite work, Debbie-the children's books you're talking about reflect on mid-20th-century views of long ago (19th century for LHOP, I think a couple of hundred years earlier for Matchlock). Maybe the placement of these two moments side-by-side doesn't work.
What will 'historical fiction' of the present time look like in 50 years? How are writers going to tell children about the war with Iraq? Are they going to create American characters who say that all Iraqi's were brutal killers? They repeat these things again and again, enough so that polls tell us that, for example, most Americans believe things about the Iraq war that are not true. Or they use fear in an attempt to convince us of the need for a certain action. They collapse a lot of people into a single frame. Certain segments of the media, and certain political leaders give us overly broad statements about Iraqi's. Let's fast forward to today and think about the war in Iraq. Some people said that Indians were savages, blood-thirsty murderers, etc, but did they believe it?
It's a typical defense of said books and their ilk, but I want to push us all to think carefully about that statement.
When reading popular and award winning books historical fiction for children (such as Little House on the Prairie or Matchlock Gun), people defend those books by saying "but that's the way they thought back then."
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