Article: Democracy in Iraq

What's been ignored during all the bickering between George Bush, his administration, the Republicans, the Democrats and the Congress is the obvious solution for the Iraq disaster contained in Bush's own statements about Iraq.

Bush brags that the sovereign nation of Iraq is a democracy. Even though Iraq is in a civil war, has no functioning government, is divided into religious/sectarian areas and its infastructure has been destroyed, let's take Bush at his word.

Democracy means rule by the people, as was expressed by the people of the United States in the November election, where it was not the Iraq war that put the Democrats in power, it was the rejection of George Bush and the Republican ideology that brought the war about.

So, since Bush says that Iraq is a democracy and a sovereign nation, then it's not up to Bush or Congress or you or me to decide what goes on in Iraq. The people of Iraq have that exclusive right and power to make those decisions.

To allow the people of Iraq to excercise that power, they must be allowed to vote in a referendum, democratically, on a yes or no decision whether the United States military is to continue to occupy their country.

I know this sounds like an overly simple solution to a complex problem, but the problem can be reduced to a simple yes or no. Submit the problem to the only people who can decide, as they and only they have the right to do.

Holding a referendum vote couldn't possibly cost the billion and a half dollars a week that it costs to occupy the country. For much less than that, we can get the problem solved, one way or the other.

I don't know how the Iraqis feel about the US military occupying their country, but if the Iraqi army was occupying the United States, I would vote to boot them out.