Recently, Moveon held a virtual town hall, and the major candidates who showed up said lots and lots of what we want to hear about ending the occupation and bringing home the troops. Hillary said:

Third, the bill puts an end to the blank check to the Iraqi government with real benchmarks and real consequences. If they don’t weed out the sectarian insurgents from security forces, distribute oil revenues fairly, and take greater responsibility for their own security, we will quit funding them immediately. And that would really put pressure on the Iraqis because we basically provide their security.

This makes me mad. Because of stories like this:

BAGHDAD, April 14 (Xinhua) — The Islamic State of Iraq armed group said in a statement posted on the Internet on Saturday that it has kidnapped 20 Iraqi soldiers and policemen and threatens to kill them in 48 hours if its demands are not met.

The statement said the security staff were abducted in eastern Baghdad, but didn’t mention at what time. Images could be seen on the Internet with the purported captives dressed in brown and blue uniforms, blindfolded and handcuffed.

The Islamic State of Iraq demanded the release of “Muslim Sunni sisters who are in the prisons of the interior ministry.”

The statement “gives the government of (Prime Minister Nuri) al-Maliki 48 hours to meet its demands or it will execute the rule of God on them.”

On Feb. 22, the Islamic State of Iraq issued another Internet statement, protesting against three Iraqi policemen’s sexual assault of a Sunni women and called on the group’s members to step up attacks on U.S. and Iraqi government forces.

However, Maliki has denied the accusations against the three Iraqi policemen, saying they were false and designed to tarnish the image of the government and the security forces.

Everything, and I do mean everything, that is happening in Iraq is our fault. The Bush administration has applied pressures to ensure that the Iraqi “government” is filled with people they can buy out, pressure, or count on to do the bidding of Western oil interests. But govern? Serve the Iraqi people? Bring an end to the violence? Nigga, pleeze.

Ending the occupation and withdrawing our troops will probably mean an increase in the violence in Iraq, and it’s likely that the groups who eventually take power will not be the “good guys” from any progressive point of view. But nothing will change that now. Iraq is a classic case of ’you broke it, you bought it,’ and we can’t take back the invasion and the destruction and destabilization it caused. Thanks, Chimpy.

But in the meantime, I wish Democrats would stop blaming the victims, and speak in a different language about what ending the occupation will do. Only pipe-dreamers like me endorse a plan for stability that includes peacekeeping troops from neighboring nations, and the application of our billions on reconstruction in Iraq, by Iraqis. So if that’s just happy fantasy talk, in the meantime can we at least stop blaming Iraq for Chimpy’s disastrous failures?

Expecting the current Iraqi government to bring peace in Iraq is like expecting a someone run over by a car to immediately afterwards get up and fix the damage their body caused to the car on impact. It’s ridiculous.