Ungrateful Iraqis Want Us To Stop Liberating Them

Four years ago this week, the U.S. army took Baghdad and staged the tearing down of Saddam's statue for a complicit media the people celebrated in the streets. And it's been smooth sailing since (if you're Dick Cheney or Joe Lieberman or John McCain).

Now? They just want us gone-

Tens of thousands of people waving Iraqi flags staged a peaceful rally in the southern city of Najaf on Monday to demand the withdrawal of U.S. forces, four years to the day since Baghdad fell to invading American troops.

The streets of the Iraqi capital itself were largely empty after authorities clamped a 24-hour ban on vehicles to prevent any insurgent attacks, especially car bombings...

...The protesters in Najaf were responding to a call by powerful anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who blames the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 for the country's woes and wants a timetable set for a U.S. troop withdrawal...

[Bush administration] So let's stay forever to spite him! Wooo! [/Bush administration]

And the Iraqi man who famously took a sledgehammer to the Saddam statue now is pessimistic-

"It achieved nothing," he said, after he had put away the magazines...

..."We got rid of a tyrant and tyranny. But we were surprised that after one thief had left, another 40 replaced him," said Jubouri, who is a Shiite Muslim. "Now, we regret that Saddam Hussein is gone, no matter how much we hated him."...

...His country today is politically fractured and struggling to find direction. He has seen four Iraqi governments since the fall of Hussein. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died. At least 3,260 U.S. soldiers have been killed...

...He called the new Baghdad security plan "a failure from the beginning." Although he has noticed that Shiite militias have faded from neighborhoods, suicide bombings have not stopped, he said. Every time he hears an explosion, he worries that his friends and relatives are among the victims...

..."I feel lost now," he said.

No wonder the administration ignored what four years ago was to be their victory lap.

One the issue of the President's escalation plan, the NY Times evaluates how it's going. While the military plays whack-a-mole with the insurgency, "there is little sign that the Baghdad push is accomplishing its main purpose: to create an island of stability in which Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds can try to figure out how to run the country together. There has been no visible move toward compromise on the main dividing issues, like regional autonomy and more power sharing between Shiites and Sunnis." If you think this will change in another year or two, I have some uranium from Niger I'd like to sell you.

Finally, Ali A. Allawi, who had been in the new Iraqi government cabinet, has written a book ripping the "rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance" of the U.S. occupation.

These damn Iraqis are being so damn ungrateful. Maybe we need to reinvade them.