What if they gave a war and everyone went home?

We watched The Daily Show from 7 Nov last night (it takes the pixels a few extra days to arrive in Australia). John Stewart had Barak Obama, Democratic Senator from Illinois, as a guest. Very funny, very charming, damn good-looking. He seemed very fresh, very smart and very energetic. That there are people like him in public office gives me hope.

Then John Stewart asked him, "If Barak Obama was in charge of the Iraq policy, what would we be doing right now?"

Obama replied:

Well, y'know, Iraq is sort of a situation where you got a guy who drove the bus into the ditch, you obviously have to get the bus out of the ditch and that's not easy to do, although you probably should fire the driver. <Lots of laughter from the audience.>

He continued on, next stating his credentials as having been against the war from the start, even before he was in office. Then he said:

Now the question is how fast can we get our troops home without causing all out chaos in Iraq, and I think that you're looking at Dec 15 as the date for the next Parliamentary elections. That has to be a benchmark where we say to ourselves, we're not going to have a military solution to this. We can't replace the Revolutionary Guard of Saddam Hussein in holding this country together. If the Iraqis are serious about keeping the country together, then we should be able to start phasing out our troops by next year. And we've got to have specific benchmarks to do that. (italics added)

It wasn't until later that I realised that I've heard that line so many times without other alternatives being offered that I've just sorta assumed it was true. But is it?

(I want to be careful to make it clear that this is in no way a criticism of Obama. I've heard the rationale a number of times. Damn, I've probably even said something like it myself. He's only the most recent.)

But how about this: what if we were to leave immediately? What if we stopped being an occupying force? Well, obviously we'd stop being a target. Would the attacks slow down or even stop, or would the country descend into civil war? Would the local law enforcement still be viewed as collaborators? Or would they be viewed as local law enforcement rather than enemy combatants?

I do know this: human nature being what it is, had we not been there to shore them up, the drafters of the Iraqi Constitution probably wouldn't have had the audacity to change the wording in the 11th hour so that boycotting the vote counted as acceptance, rather than rejection. The Constitution would have likely been rejected without this change, creating opportunities for more negotiation and more options for satisfaction for the Sunni minority. Maybe democracy, that elusive dream, would have broken out.

Anyhow, I have a lot more questions than obvious answers, and I can't look forward and compare two alternative histories. I do know that civilian Iraqis are being killed by our troops daily, and that virtually no Iraqi family is untouched. What was touted as a "liberation" would seem more and more an invasion to any Iraqi whose son, mother, sister, neighbour was killed or knew someone who was killed at the hands of the combined U.S., British, Australian forces.

I don't know what would happen. But I know that I don't want my government to kill any more Iraqis. And I think that maybe, just maybe we can trust sovereign peoples to govern themselves without our "help".

Not to follow a faulty metaphor too far, but sometimes you just gotta leave that ol' bus lying in the ditch, and bring the passengers home.