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I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t express an incredible disappointment in this president and administration. Although an early supporter of President Bush in many ways, I feel that he has become the classic case of a bad hire. Despite that perception, we can all Monday morning quarterback about what we could or should have done differently in Iraq.

Having been born in neighboring Iran, and having traveled extensively on both personal and economic missions throughout the Middle East, I strongly believe that we have no business being in the nation building business. And we must find an elegant exit. Here is one perspective with several components:

1. Are we occupiers or liberators? Let them vote to keep us there or politely ask us to leave. If a democratic vote validates the desire for us to stay, it immediately legitimizes our presence. Conversely, if the general public wants U.S. troop to withdraw, we are doomed to fail if we don’t comply. They must also understand that with U.S. departure comes the enormous burden, responsibility and accountability for self-governance amongst diametrically opposing missions, visions and heritages.

2. If our founding fathers saw wisdom in the hybrid-governance model of a federal government as well as state stewardship, why couldn’t a very segregated Iraq (with millenniums of hatred between Shites of the south, Sunnis of central Iraq, and Kurds in the north) also benefit from 18 regional governments? Let them migrate to where they are naturally inclined.

3. Here’s a “Dadism” for you: If you want to know someone’s motivation, follow the money. Iraq has one of the strongest oil reserves in OPEC. Contribute one third of the oil revenues to the federal government, one third to each of the 18 regional governments, and one third to every man, woman and child who resides and is employed as a head of household in Iraq. If your lifeline is dependent on free, un-obscured and continuous flow of oil revenues, you are less likely to support an insurgency to disrupt that value chain.

4. Those readers who have heard one of my keynote speeches may recall my definition of trust as simply credibility plus empathy. Current modern day Iraq is desperate for modern day healthcare. Leverage U.S. medical student graduates to rebuild both our credibility and drive a global PR campaign to regain our empathy with a culture we are trying to change. If we send carriers of young doctors from around the world to Iraq, we are certain to shift the global perception of American arrogance with humanitarian empathy.

For those who are eager to once again pull out before the work is done – isn’t it interesting that our current U.S. democracy is well over 200 years old and the democracy that we are imposing is comparatively a blip on the radar at less than three years old? Those who are frustrated by the enormous loss of human life in the past three years of this campaign would be well reminded that we lost more soldiers in one day on the beaches of Normandy than we have during three years of guerilla warfare in a part of the world that few Americans have ever experienced. My fear is that in this country’s history, the American people have a four-year tolerance for any kind of a conflict. We struggle to see a continuous flow of body bags as progress.

The fundamental difference between all of the previous wars and this particular conflict is not only the strong prevalence of often-slanted media coverage, but also the unfortunate fact that in many ways we are climbing this steep mountain alone.