The Iraqi people have been consistently saying for a while now that they want us to just please leave, thank you very much.
Carried out by an Iraqi research body, the poll also said that 82% of Iraqis were “strongly opposed” to the presence of foreign troops and less than 1% believed the troops were responsible for improvement in security. Forty-three percent believed conditions for peace and security had worsened.
A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers.
In Baghdad, for example, nearly three-quarters of residents polled said they would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign forces left Iraq, with 65 percent of those asked favoring an immediate pullout, according to State Department polling results obtained by The Washington Post.
Another new poll, scheduled to be released on Wednesday by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, found that 71 percent of Iraqis questioned want the Iraqi government to ask foreign forces to depart within a year.
That’s the last poll I’m aware of. At that time, the elected government of the sovereign nation of Iraq still wanted us to stay:
The stark assessments, among the most negative attitudes toward U.S.-led forces since they invaded Iraq in 2003, contrast sharply with views expressed by the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Last week at the United Nations, President Jalal Talabani said coalition troops should remain in the country until Iraqi security forces are “capable of putting an end to terrorism and maintaining stability and security.”
Not so much any more:
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shrugged off U.S. doubts of his government’s military and political progress on Saturday, saying Iraqi forces are capable and American troops can leave “any time they want.”
[...]
“We say in full confidence that we are able, God willing, to take the responsibility completely in running the security file if the international forces withdraw at any time they want,” he said.One of al-Maliki’s close advisers, Shiite lawmaker Hassan al-Suneid, bristled over the American pressure, telling The Associated Press that “the situation looks as if it is an experiment in an American laboratory (judging) whether we succeed or fail.”
He sharply criticized the U.S. military, saying it was committing human rights violations and embarrassing the Iraqi government through such tactics as building a wall around Baghdad’s Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah and launching repeated raids on suspected Shiite militiamen in the capital’s slum of Sadr City.
He also criticized U.S. overtures to Sunni groups in Anbar and Diyala provinces, encouraging former insurgents to join the fight against al-Qaida in Iraq. “These are gangs of killers,” he said.
So the Iraqi people want to see U.S. troops out of Iraq, the American people want to see U.S. troops out of Iraq, and now the elected government of the sovereign nation of Iraq is saying they don’t need us there.
But, of course, we’re going to stay. Because the opinions of the Iraqi people, the American people and the Iraqi government don’t count. What counts is the opinion of George Bush, the opinion of Laura and Barney, the opinion of the lock-stepping goose-stepping Republican congressional caucus, the opinion of Joe Lieberfrau.
So hundreds more Americans will die. And what happens then? Maliki — or his successor — presumably is never going to say: “Christ, can’t you guys take an effing hint, in the name of Allah? Just effing leave. Now.” So we just keep going at this pace of 100 plus dead American soldiers a month for the next 18 months
And for what, again?