Leadership Quote by Scott McClellan

“In survey after survey” is doing the heavy lifting here: it’s a rhetorical Kevlar vest. McClellan isn’t just relaying what Iraqis want; he’s preemptively insulating the Bush administration’s Iraq project from charges of occupation, coercion, or self-interest. Numbers stand in for legitimacy, and repetition (“after survey after survey”) implies an overwhelming, settled consensus - not a complicated society under extraordinary pressure.

The phrase “the Iraqi people” is a deliberate flattening. In a country riven by sect, class, region, and the raw aftermath of invasion, that plural reality becomes a single, unified subject with a single democratic desire. It’s politically efficient: if “the people” want elections, then American policy becomes less an imposition than an act of midwifery, helping a nation deliver its own future.

Then there’s the strategic modesty of “choose our leaders.” It sounds like a simple, almost innocent aspiration - not “end the occupation,” not “control our oil,” not “try war crimes,” not “design a constitution without foreign leverage.” The quote narrows Iraqi agency to the ballot box, a framing that aligns perfectly with Washington’s preferred metric of progress: elections as proof of success, regardless of security, sovereignty, or civil cohesion.

The context matters: McClellan spoke as a spokesperson in an era when public support hinged on moral clarity. This line offers that clarity by converting a contested war into a customer-satisfaction story: the people asked, America delivered.