The mess in the middle east wasn't created by the second Iraq war. Nor was the war handled in a stupid manner. At best, you could argue the post-war was bungled, but even that was no where near as bad as the decision by the Obama administration to completely pull out - which you want to give a free pass on.
Let me lay a set of alternative policies that I assert would have been substantially better than what was implemented by the Bush Administration.
I don't agree with you fully. Partially, because I have different view of the consequence of not dealing with Saddam Hussein, and of why we actually attacked Iraq than just about everyone else. I've said it before on this board, over the years, but in my view Saddam had to go because he had a giant forum and was deliberately undermining support for the US internationally and looked like he was trying to become a international rallying point by being defiant and getting away with it. Absent the international media forum he was provided, he'd still be in power.
For the record, very few people agree with me on that.
(1) Once we have attacked the Sunni-led Taliban regime in Afghanistan in response to the attacks by Al Qaeda on 9/11, the rational policy would have been to focus on the very challenging job of eliminating Al Qaeda and stabilizing Afghanistan enough to depart.
Which we did, and could have continued to do, notwithstanding the invasion of Iraq. I think you're ignoring the very real difficulty associated with focusing on Afghanistan of becoming bogged down and incapable of making the kind of gains that US citizens require to not become dissatisfied with a conflict. Russia was as close to our level of disproportionate power as anyone and they were completely bogged down in that country.
I'm just not sure more "focus" would have made a substantial difference there.
Do not attack the largely secular Sunni nation Iraq, because it will (a) cost many lives, (b) cost significant funding, (c) eviscerate the strong international support we had for combat operations in Afghanistan, (d) significantly strengthen the regional position of Shiite Iran by devastating its Sunni neghbors to the East and West, and (e) make us responsible via the so-called "Pottery Barn rule" (if you break it, you own it.
Most of this is a reasonable opinion. I just view it as overstated. (a) costing lives is the result of any conflict, and per the international media doing nothing at that time was tantamount to murdering innocent Iraqis by denying them resources under the sanctions and by leaving them exposed to the murderous whims of a dictator, so it's a balancing act and not a one-way clear decision. (b) maintaining the status quo was cheaper, but still incredibly costly, and if Iraq recovered and became aggressive again was nothing but a deferral of the costs. (c) this one is mostly true, there was far less support for Iraq and far more withdrawal of support generally after this point, of course as far as combat power goes the net impact was close to zero. The biggest "issue" is actually morally reprehensible. Using ground troops from coalition countries prevented American soldiers from dying, which kept American morale inflated and American citizens from demanding we withdrawal because of our casualties. (d) this was partially true, of course if we had maintained our presence and assisted the rise of an effective government, this point would actually flip on its head and substantially weaken the position of those hostile forces. (e) true, which makes the withdrawal by the Obama administration even worse.
(2) Once we have defeated the Iraqi Army and need to stabilize the country, do not suddenly disband the Iraqi Army, leaving the 400,000 men in Iraq best trained to kill other people with their weapons and no prospects for employment. (PS: Guess where the military leadership of ISIS came from). It would have been far better to keep them on the payroll as the force responsible for maintaining order.
To me this is a hindsight argument. Leaving a massive army with loyalties to the prior regime in place and armed is questionable. It is a very Roman approach to set yourself up as the new boss man and use the existing power structures. It's inconsistent though with the expressed beliefs, however naive, of the Administration that they were going to build better institutions.
In any event, as matter of Real Politick you'd be correct that. As a matter of real reform probably a lot less than you think.
With respect to Iraq War #1, after the invasion of Kuwait, I can on balance favor the military intervention. However, it would have been an even better policy not to support Saddam so strongly in his wars in the previous decade against Iran (where over a million people died, and where Saddam wound up using US satellite imagery to target chemical weapons use that killed 100,000 Iranians). That covert support probably contributed to Saddam's misunderstanding that US Ambassador April Gallespie was giving him the go-ahead for the initial invasion of Kuwait.
Agreed.
I'm highly opposed to this idea of supporting proxies to fight our wars. It didn't work with Saddam, it didn't work with Al Queda, it's not going to work to our long term benefit with the Syrian "rebels" we are supporting and will ultimately betray. Why does everyone see it in hindsight, yet let it go in real time?
