Recent poles report that 60% of U.S. citizens now do not approve of the Bush administrations decision to go into Iraq. After five years, 3800+ U.S. fatalities and the death of countless Iraqi citizens, I have to say that am glad America found its voice before something bad happened!

Now everyone wants to talk about the lies used as justifications for invading Iraq and how the U.S. should have gained International support. But arguing these issues now is pointless because the damage has been done. It’s like crying over spilt milk when the real debate is whether or not to clean the milk up or leave it to rot in the desert sun.

Of course these same voices are all saying, bring our troops home, a reasonable response however there is a reason why pulling out is not the right thing to do, a reason that is neither strategic or directly political. It is simply a matter of morality, which sounds extremely hypocritical given the circumstances surrounding the occupation in the first place, but as I said we made the mess and it is our responsibility and moral obligation to clean it up less the Iraqi people suffer the same fate as many others before them.

After 9-11 the question, “why do they hate us?” was tossed around a lot. President Bush proposed that they hate our freedom and as childishly compelling an argument that is, it falls a few feet right of the bulls-eye. Most accept religion for the driving resentment and they are almost correct. Religion and politics are often interchangeable catalysts in global conflict but in this case religion is more like the salt in the wound rather than the cutting knife.

To understand the real reason “they hate us” we need to turn to the historical record.

1973 under President Nixon, the United States secretly aided General Augusto Pinochet in ousting Chile’s President Salvador Allende (as revealed in declassified documents released in 2000). After achieving its political agenda the U.S. walks away, leaving thousands of Chileans to die and thousands more to be forced into exile under Pinochet’s oppressive rule.

1959 – 1975 Vietnam, perhaps the most controversial war in history before Iraq and depending on whom you ask one of the only wars the U.S. ever lost. The secret agenda’s behind this conflict are still surfacing and are still being debated by everyone but the Vietnamese people who are still rebuilding their lives.

For most of the 1980’s under the Reagan/Bush administration the U.S. funneled weapons and money into the then small extremist Muslim group called the Taliban In order to facilitate the expulsion of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. Again once the political goal had been achieved the Afghan people were left to suffer in the hands of the newly empowered Taliban and their leader Osama Bin Laden. We all know how that one turned out.

Then you have Haiti in 2004, and the attempts to undermine the Somali government in 2006 that went hardly noticed behind the cloud of Iraq. Not to mention ongoing policies set to unseat the leaders of the Venezuelan and Cuban governments. The list goes back further and is far more expansive than can possibly be outlined here.

Keep in mind my point is not to debate the justifications for each event or sort through the propaganda but rather to illustrate one thing; the U.S. tends to spread democracy like so much mentholatum in the eyes of the World. I may be going to go out on a limb here but just possibly, maybe, perhaps this history is the real reason “they hate us”.

This is why pulling out of Iraq would morally be the wrong decision. Not just because it will fuel the disdain towards the U.S. but because the Iraqi people deserve the freedoms and opportunities that Americans enjoy. That was after all the promise behind the occupation wasn’t it?

Unfortunately morality and obligation do not weigh heavily in politics and most likely Iraq’s fate will be the same as those that came before it once the U.S. government achieves its underlying goals and moves on to Iran. As Bush said, “we have not completed the mission” (that was after “Mission Accomplished”), the mission he is talking about is just not the one we have been led to believe in.

Many people are making billions and billions of dollars off this war as they have with all previous wars. To them the human toll does not matter as long as their pockets get fat. The ones that suffer are the people that lose loved ones, the people that receive a neatly folded flag for their heartache and the families that sit in the rubble of what was once their home, their grief drowned out by the constant chatter of gun fire and thunder of bombs.