I'm sure there were plenty of people after WWII who said the Japanese could never overcome their emperor worship to be ruled by an elected government.
Heck, we had a horrible Civil War after 80 years. We're in no position to tell others engaged in relatively low-key sectarian violence that they are incapable of representative government, given what we went through to get to where we are today.
We signed a hell of a nice treaty with the Japs. They were very cooperative. Their emperor ordered them to cut it out. They turned their talents inward, and have become formidible industrialists, which took about 30 years and lots of advice from a scattering of private US citizens who couldn't get the labor unions' ear in Detroit. They had attacked us, actually invaded parts of Alaska, which gave us the moral authority to beat the living tar out of them. It took a couple of nukes to do that. I don't see us as having the moral authority to nuke Iraq. We will not do in Iraq what it takes to bring the entire population to its knees, (they only do that for allah) nor probably should we. Afgahnistan, in late 2001, diffent story. Wish we were still in Afgahnistan, more than Iraq. Maybe this thread should have been posted right after operation Anaconda. What is going to bring the Jihaddies to their knees, the way the Emperor was brought to his? Are we even fighting the Jihaddies now in Iraq? or acting as referrees in a minefeild?
Foreign countries didn't intervene in our "civil" war. We ARE in a position to take that position.
We've got Saddam out, his sons won't be carrying his regime on, and there are no WMDs in Iraq. There are enough Iraqis who can keep AlQaeda from taking over the oil fields, if they want to. If AlQaeda siezes the oil fields or Iraq degenerates in our absence to the detriment of NATO countries, there will be enough international interest to form a coalition on par with the first gulf war to clean the place back up. We've been darn successful.
The Iraqis are just trying to let Allah sort things out, now that the lid's off. Time for a gradual exit, which we all knew was going to happen anyway, right? I sure don't want any bases in Iraq, any more than Reagan wanted Marines in Beirut after that bombing. The Dems have just been running to the front of the parade, trying to take credit for getting us out of a place we were going to leave anyway. It's best now that we remain as strong and unspent as possible for any annihilations that will be required in the future, and not get too emotionally involved in Iraqi welfare.