If it's a free and fair election...
By our standards, it won't be. You would have to be totally detached from reality to think it's going to be a free and fair election by anything close to our standards. Do you see US troops going into Fallujah to guard the polling stations?
And they have $18 Billion reasons to desire a continued US presence.
I doubt that $18B means much at all to the Iraqi on the street. Keep in mind that the US has recently changed the reward for the capture of OBL to include farm animals and equipment because the Afghanis don't understand $M. Admittedly, the Iraqi urban population has a better grasp of $, but they are also going to look at their own oil reserves, under their control. The people in Fallujah [300,000] voting to keep the US in Iraq...really?
And there's the reality that they live in a very hostile neighborhood....
The downside to "democracy" is that the people don't necessarily vote what is best for them. They vote with their gut. And reading the polls, their gut tells them that the US should get out of Iraq now.
IMO, the probability that Iraqis will opt for an immediate exit of US Forces is very high. As the election gets close and if the outcome looks that way, there are some obvious options...1) Delay the elections...that's problematic, 2) Declare the elections to be not fair and free...that's problematic.
I would suggest that the only viable option that the US has is to begin withdrawing [right now] all Coalition Forces from areas in Iraq that are relatively peaceful and make a huge PR deal of it; illustrating that the US is not an occupier. According to the Administration, this is a large segment of Iraq. If the local governments want a coalition presence to remain, let them publicly beg for it on Al Jazeera.
The US has between now and January to convince the majority of Iraqis that we're liberators, not occupiers and we should stay.
If we have to leave Iraq, are we going to return our military forces to Saudi Arabia or Kuwait? Current opinion in those countries makes it problematic for their governments to accept an increase in Forces in their countries.
jttmab |
