It was never about leaving the island for Juliet. It was about going home.
In post time flashes 1974, staying on the island is her best and only option for ever being able to go home. Really home. Even though she reverses her decision to leave, and the show gives every indication that decision is Sawyer-related, it's doesn't make it not her decision. Juliet is smart, and she is practical. (And he's right, in that "off the island in 1974" is not the "home" she is longing for.)
By 1977, things have changed. Sawyer might still believe that fairy tale that Locke is going to come back and save them, but there's no way Juliet or Jin or Miles do. I was originally going to say they'd lost hope, but I don't think that's it exactly. Things have changed.
This distinction between "off the island" and "home" is what drives some of the maddening flip-flopping in the Incident. Juliet didn't have to hit that guy with the tray and get them off the sub. That was their chance to leave the island, and all she had to do was sit there. But Jack and his bomb plan offered the possibility of home. Actual home. Everything she wants.
Which is driven home by her actions at the end of the Incident -- which remain her decision (except for the whole stupid chain part). She wants to give the rest of them the thing she's wanted for six years, and has continually decided to give up -- the chance to go home.
(And, really, she didn't have to decide to stay on the island in the 70s. If she was getting written off anyway, the writers could have done it then. I'm not saying I agree with the way it all went down and the way that, yeah, ultimately it ended with another dead woman on Lost so a guy could have the motivation of his sad manpain, but I do think the decisions Juliet made were hers, and made sense for her character, and I'm glad we got what we got if it was between that and "Juliet gets to leave the island.")
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