First it was the threat of weapons of mass destruction, but the current raison de guerre is that we deposed Saddam Hussein to bring democracy to Iraq. Which succeeded — or, at least, a vote was held and people voted and got a purple thumb and then everyone went back to having a big ol' civil war. Let's hold another vote. I propose that this ballot will have a single question on it: Should the foreign troops leave within 1 year?
1 year is a nice round number, and it allows for an orderly goodbye. If they say yes, then we train people if they want the training, accept refugees if they want to come and be US citizens, and we leave in a year. We can even split hairs on whether it should be a year of the Islamic calendar or a year on the Gregorian calendar, but that ends up being a pretty small difference. That's democracy: people vote for something, and then the government does that thing (modulo various checks and balances).
By all accounts and all polls, this ballot measure would end up with more than 70% of the Iraqi population voting us out of their country.1 Why are we staying in a country that does not want us inside of it? We ``brought democracy'', and if they aren't free to vote us away on their own terms, it starts being colonialism and empire-building. (Sidenote: If we do stay, what is the end condition? Will we stay in Iraq until ``terror'' surrenders and we finally win the war?)
We may have broken it, but we do not own it. Iraqis own it. It is, after all, their country that we broke. Let's find out what they want us to do and then do that.
- http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/home_page/250.php?nid=&id=&pnt=250&lb=hmpg1