Let’s just erase facts and accept the far left’s premise. That’s certainly the way to victory.
As one who fully supported the war on the grounds that we could not take the CHANCE that Saddam either had WMDs to give to al-Qaeda or that he was cooperating with al-Qaeda in any way, I think Iraq had to be invaded.
And I think in retrospect it was a disaster. We did confirm that Saddam + al-Qaeda was not a threat to us. And that is worth something.
Don’t know why you have to be “of the left” to admit that removing Saddam destabilized things. Would it have not destabilized if we had stayed? Probably BUT-—it was George W. Bush, not Obama, that negotiated the withdrawal. So we weren’t going to stay anyway (which in my view was a mistake.)