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Aha, now, you see, I found this interesting. Many Americans (among others) do not understand middle-Eastern mentality: I, being middle-eastern, do.

The way it usually works is that, say, there are 4 groups: A, B, C, and D.

A and B hate eachother, and C and D hate eachother, like this:

A--------B

C--------D

Now, what Americans don't get (understandable, my culture is very, very peculiar in these matters), is that if a 5th opposing party, E, is introduced, A, B, C and D will temporarily band together against this new intruder.

A B
| |
----------------E
| |
C D

This explains the powerful resistance to Coalition troops in Iraq.

This being said, the people, not knowing any better, will rely on tradition and democratically elect an islamist fundamentalist. of course, now, the US won't be able to do anything about it. Afterall, there is no more oppressive regime, right?

As a matter of fact, yes.
What you saw was the small crowd toppling the statue cheerfully, not the grief-stricken masses off-camera.

First off hats off to ax-man for trying to explain some of the middle eastern mindset. I would like to add that the worst infidels to the Sunni are the Shia, and the feeling is mutual. The reason that these groups are banding together, and even receiving support from Iran to bomb Shia’s is because they wish to punish the US, which they believe is the cause of all their problems for many decades, and that the US is pushing for a non-religiously radical government, and very much going against the instilled cultural values of the people.
For many years in the southern part as well as the northern part of Iraq, under operation provide comfort we were seen as the good guys because we basically contained and isolated the control that Saddam Hussein had. At this time we were with them against their common enemy, the Sunnies, and the Republican Guard. So when they fell it was a great celebration of the Americans in Bagdad, and a great many people supported the US being there. In fact most Iraqi’s still like the fact that Saddam is gone. However, it becomes an issue of now what to do.
When you have your religious leaders, yelling at the top of their lungs how America and Israel, and all Jews are evil and not even human that has a big impact on things. They can’t blame Saddam any more now it is the US and the people in power. They are told to blame them and they do. And we get blamed for some of the most outrages crap over there. (its our fault so and so is raped and now unmarriable, its our fault they are still illiterate, its our fault they don’t have a great economy immediately, suicide bombings are our fault, the intafada issued by Bin Laden, our fault, all this crap is our fault how?)

But back to the point made by Sanosuke, no, the majority of people were all for the liberation of Iraq. Especially many of those who were his neighbors. Saddam was not well liked. Back then the claims were made against him that are now being levied against us. Its just now they need a new enemy, might as well be the one everyone else already hates, us and Israel. And since we are there…

But if we leave the violence will not stop, it will only grow more severe. The militia problem will not be solved, and will grow worse. The advances will once again regress as tradition takes hold again. And we will have more people jumping on the bandwagon to kill Americans. Right now we are fighting, and losing lives, but we are fighting these battles here and now so we don’t have to spill even more American blood to fight it all over again.

I think it's flawed thinking to forcibly remove a government for power and not expect a civil war. At this point we the United States, not the Iraqi people, have chosen what form of government they will live under. We have chosen who to support. We are the outside force that currently dictates their lives. Anyone in their right minds would have issue with this in the long run. Is it good for people in the short term, providing schools, shutting down Saddam, etc, perhaps. But our continued presence and unwillingness to allow them to have whatever strife they'll create almost creates a situation where we are forcing the country to be dependant.
Besides that, the thread was originally on what kind of job Bush was doing, and became a debate forum for foreign policy. I believe this helps us ignore his malicious destruction of our civil liberties (which you can easily decifer from my wording, is something that bothers me).

That would be because we're not fighting a traditional war. We're reconstructing Iraq while dealing with guerilla fighters. Not easy to kill large numbers of those guys.