in response to a post asking how do you leave a country?

But nothing happens in a vacuum; if we leave Iraq, Iraq is still there, and a pullout carries consequences for Iraqis, for the region and for the next thirty years of our foreign policy. What’s the best-case scenario if we go? What’s the worst thing that could happen?

We should be asking "What’s the best-case scenario if we stay". Things have continuously gotten worse since the US started its occupation. This is not to say violence is not part of national unification, in fact I can't think of a single case were the process of forming a nation state has not been violent. But contrary to the dogma pushed the massive US government public information industry the presence of a foreign military occupying power clouds this process of nation unification.

Inevitable the occupying military aligns with sympathetic section of the domestic Iraqi population which inevitably draw lines along ethnic/religious identities. A killed female translator working with the occupation becomes a Shia killed by a Sunni with a debut of violence for the Shia to return. This greatly magnifies the violence that takes place in the process of unification. (hence the extreamly violent civil war). Even the domestic occupation sympathizers are conscience of this and have call for timetables for withdrawal.

But these calls fall on the death ears of the dogmatic imperialists that are ironically fighting for a lost cause that will quickly lose relevance as we transition into micro-energy production, renewables and global increased transport efficiency. As for their more commonly stated goals of regional stability looks less and less plausible every day. Elections prop up extremist in extrema situations (ie Hamas), violence continues to increases in Iraq, and every index of terrorist activity is on the rise.

The powers that be would have you believe that terrorism will be fueled by the absence of occupation as opposed to being fueled by the presence of occupation. Withdrawal will not give the neo-cons the type of government which they want, but if we aim to minimize the amount of violence its the only choice. Unfortunately for the neocons minimizing violence is simply not as important as selective control over governing structures (we could also call it convenient morality). They would have you believe this selective control reduces violence in the future but this same logic kept Saddam supported and the same logic again ravaging the Iraqi people.

Beyond all above logistical arguments its the more basic and essential point. That we have no right to continuously occupy other peoples territory to ostensibly befit them and our selves. The idea that we can just occupy a country with no timetable until it reflects a un-declared imaged state thats in our "leader" head is the basic definition of a war aggression. In a functioning democracy this would be impossible.