Not my words, read again... and yes US soldiers roam a foreign country at will, arresting people who are not their citizens at will, for good or bad but I call that controlling a country at gunpoint. People will never accept such rule, therefore there will always be resistance.
No free elections are possible while a country is being controled by a foreign power, regardless of whenever you lead people there at gunpoint or not. Those elections are simply irrelevant since people that are elected have no control over anything. Believing otherwise is dumb...
I dont deny that US perhaps wishes, say, Iraq to be independent and free, but now it is by no measures' free'. They have a government that for obvious reasons leans on foregn power therefore has no independent politics of its own and no control of their own country.
When US leaves, you still end up with an essentially US made government and US made army. Iraq still has a long way to go to real freedom.