2. Sectarian conflict will tear the country apart: even during the American occupation the Shiias would lie and manipulate the Americans to bomb their political and ethnic rivals and not the real military targets. This deepened the Iraqis hatred and mistrust of Americans and made us the targets of all armed groups in the country.
3. Once Saddam was over thrown we would be dealing with corrupt 'leaders' and weak security forces who would not fight if they were at risk: there was no way to put in place a secure government.
4. There was no WMD: When you say that "Saddam has wmd" (as Cheney-Bush did many times) you are making a positive statement that you have compelling evidence that this is true. If you have zero evidence you are lying; and Bush lied his head off. If you have zero evidence and Hans Blix (the person who caught the N. Koreans making nuclear weapons on Bush I s watch) has been on the ground looking for WMD for months and said there aren't any you are a liar and your party are all morons.
1. But the number ONE reason we should never have gone in in the first place is that the Iraqi people DID NOT ASK US TO. If the Iraqi people had said they wanted us to overthrow the terrible oppressor Saddam AND that they were ready to make the sacrifices to help us do it then Bush might have a case. They didn't! They were NEVER going to do that! It was a fucking blunder. colossal stupidity. the difference between Iraq and Libya is that the Libyan people were ALREADY fighting and dying to overthrow Qaddafi the Iraqis were not and would never.
But, getting back to the present. Going back there to repeat a stupid mistake would be an even worse mistake. We should support the Kurds in the north (these are the people that Henry Kissinger betrayed back in the day) and help them to defend themselves from the sectarian bloodbath Bush has created in the rest of the country.
A few overarching facts from Vox.com
http://www.vox.com/2014/6/20/5819018/6- ... aq-cost-us
1. At least 126,107 civilian deaths
2. America lost 4,486 service members (and nearly all of the VA problems were caused by the flood of injured Vets from Iraq)
3. The war created 2 million refugees
4. $817 billion in direct costs, and trillions more in indirect costs
5. Iraq is no freer than Iran
6. 0 weapons of mass destruction
So not only did hundreds of thousands of people die and trillions of dollars get squandered, but the actual strategic objective of the war (defusing the WMD threat) was nonexistent, as was the humanitarian objective of creating a pacific liberal democracy. The war accomplished little to nothing at an enormous cost. Let's not repeat it.
The top-line problem is that the Iraqis do not have any vision of a legitimate government, democratic or not, which might ever earn or deserve the support of Shiia and Sunni and Arab groups. ISIS only succeeded because the populations of those cities were Sunnis who were oppressed by Shiias and who supported the tiny band of ISIS fighters. We are not seeing the effect of ISIS so much as the inability to govern by the corrupt and murderous Shiia dolts Bush put in power.
yrs,
rubato