The founders of our own nation faced a similar situation; support the declaration of independence and face death. The king wasn't at all fond of the colonists who wanted freedom. Yes we got help from the French and I'm sure the founders were thankful for it. But it was our war. An American (well future American anyway) wrote the declaration of independence and other Americans signed it. It would have been a different story if Napoleon wrote it. How would the founders have reacted if the French just came here and told us they were going to liberate us with or without our consent, and then set up a government for us modeled after their own?
The big difference that jumps out at me on this is that our "king" was weeks away from us, and months away from actually piecing together a military force to come get us. In the case in Iraq, Saddam and his goons were just hours away, and would snuff out a revolt in a heart beat. This is why the Kurds lost so many people when Saddam gased them. Fortunately, following the first part of the Gulf War, the Kurdish regions were under US protection (no-fly zone), allowing them to develop an autonomous region and prosper.
The current crop of rebels are willing to fight a much more powerful adversary, us. Was there no one there before brave enough to stand up to Saddam? or was there no one who had an interest in doing so?
BTW the new government controls the military and the police and allegedly has the popular support of the people, so why can't they take care of their own damn country? Who is there who has sufficient power to overthrow them?
Because Saddam, unlike us, did not care about civilian casualties, and was willing to gas his people to death. And also had a nice big army and nasty intelligence forces on the ground which we don't have to the same extent.
And now you have the foreign fighters and terrorists which you didn't have before, which are there just to attack the US.
Besides, the current insurgency is not an insurgency, it's various delocalized bands of people carrying out pure terrorism. If they actually wanted to lead a revolution, they couldn't, regardless of the presence of US troops or not (although it certainly would get
very nasty if we weren't there, and the possibility of a big explosive Middle East war would be very likely).
