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Iraq was a disaster from the get-go -- for all the reasons Dick Cheney first warned about back in 1994 when he explained in an interview why occupying Iraq was a bad idea.

The post-invasion Iraq officially became a farce when the U.S. leadership allowed the new Iraqi government to adopt a constitution in which Islam is enshrined as the official state religion. That pretty much guaranteed two things: (1) Iraq would remain culturally dysfunctional in perpetuity, and (2) Iraq would be an unstable mess due to the competing interests of various Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims.

The problem here isn't that the Bush administration did something wrong. The problem is that the Bush administration fouled this up even though anyone who looked at the situation objectively and wasn't viewing it with a political agenda in mind was predicting exactly what we're seeing now. As I've said many time here on FreeRepublic, Iraq is a disaster today because Saddam Hussein was far more effective at quelling civil unrest and radical Islamic extremism than anyone in Washington.

It's certainly true that America should have prevented an Islamic constitution.

But even with that monumental failing - which I regard as a failure of civilisational confidence by the Bush administration - the people of Iraq still gained a voice in the process of government for the first time ever. Also: Iraq became a country which wasn't trying actively to destroy its neighbors.

Iraq didn't become a model democracy. It became a democracy. It became the least-worst state in a region filled with tyranny and theocratic crazies.

Iraq is a disaster today because Obama heavily funded extreme Jihadists in Syria while simultaneously abandoning Iraq. It doesn't even look like a mistake on his part: rather it looks like a deliberate act of establishing a head-chopping caliphate.

But yes I'm pretty sure that - while Saddam actively supported exactly the same flavor of Jihadists - he wouldn't have encouraged them to invade his own country. That's the exciting innovation that Obama brought to the Middle East.

I think the idea was to take on the radical Islamists by "draining the swamps" - Iraq was (or should have been) low-hanging fruit.
Turkey hurt us by not allowing us the northern arm of the pincer, and there was plenty of blame to be put on W's (mis)handling of the follow-on effort.
But the rationale was sound - the execution sucked.

BTW - love your Slim Picken's tagline, I read it and can still hear his sweet drawl....