Nobody is downplaying the sacrifices of our soldiers in Iraq. However, there is an irony that if we try to install “democratic” governments in the Middle East we may actually wind up with creating systems that will be far more anti-Jewish, anti-Christian and anti-infidel (The West). Perhaps in a few generations, when the middle class has expanded and there is more connection to the world, nations like Syria and Libya will evolve into something like Turkey. I hope that Iraq will develop a Turkish model as well. The problem is, if the majority of people in a country see life from the eyes of a fundamentalist Muslim then don’t expect something looking like Jeffersonian democracy to develop. I thought Saddam was brutal, but he was trying to make Iraq into a secular state, which might have served our interests better had we tried to co-opt him rather than use him to punish Iran in the 1980s.
Oh, and if the new government of Iraq is so wonderful, why are Christian Iraqi people trying their best to leave?
No one was allowed, under pain of death, to emigrate before. Now that Iraq is a free country which allows its citizens to freely travel abroad, there will definitely be plenty of emigrants - especially Christians who already have relatives and established social networks in other countries. A free Iraq is better than a totalitarian Iraq, but America and France and Sweden are still better places to live than any version of Iraq to date, and anyone who has a connection to one of those countries is going to jump on it.
Plenty of Iraqi Muslims are emigrating as well.