Here's a link to the article:
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/06/10/25/10077261.html
New Iraq is working hard to get rid of the old ways
By Amir Taheri, Special to Gulf News
Talk to Iraqis these days and you are likely to hear one thing: what are the Americans and their British allies up to?
The Iraqis have in mind the perception that the political mainstream in both the US and Britain, as illustrated by the recent remarks of the head of the British armed forces, now regards the Iraq project as a disaster, with cut-and-run or whistle-and-walk-away, as the only options.
Most Iraqis regard the toppling of Saddam Hussain, the dismantling of his machinery of war and oppression and the introduction of pluralist politics to Iraq as an historic success. It is precisely because the stakes are so high that new Iraq faces such a determined challenge from its two arch enemies: Baathism and radical Islamism. New Iraq represents an historic victory that is challenged by the enemies of both the western democracies and the Iraqi people. The issue is how to consolidate that victory, not to snatch defeat from its jaw.
Iraq today is the central battlefield in the global war between two mutually exclusive visions of the future.
The jihadists know that they cannot win on that battlefield. After three years of almost daily killings, often in the most horrible manner imaginable, they have failed to alter new Iraq's political agenda. Nor have they managed to win control of any territory or broaden their constituency.
Read the rest at the link above.
Iraq would immediately become the center of anti-western Islamofascism. Iraqi citizens who tried to protest would be slaughtered. The Islamofascists would absolutely perceive the allied departure as a defeat of the United States, and would be emboldened to a degree that would generate recruits to their cause worldwide.