[Alberta's Child]

In Iraq, the U.S. pissed away thousands of lives and billions of dollars to topple the Ba'athist regime and install a new government where -- get this -- Islam is established as the official state religion.

It's mind-boggling how anyone could ever look back and justify that bullsh!t anymore. I supported Donald Trump because I hoped those days would come to an end here.

... sitting back while a ruthless dictator invaded neighboring countries would lead to no good.

Right. The preferred course of action is to sell arms to a neighboring country like Saudi Arabia that supports civil insurrections among its neighbors.

[Magnum44]

It's mind-boggling how anyone could ever look back and justify that bullsh!t

Its easy to look back. Its harder when you are in the moment and don't have foresight.

At this point, one could look back and ask 'at what point did we fail?'. Like any accident chain, we might be able to find multiple points where a different action could have brought about better results. Should we have ceded govt back to the Iraqis so soon? Probably not. PC probably bit us there. Should Barry have pulled our troops out years before the Iraqis were ready to defend themselves from Iranian influence. Probably not.

But at the time, both in 91 and later post 911, it was the course of action that was taken, based on what people knew at the time. We did great things, but we clearly need to learn from mistakes as well.

And yes, we should be very aware of the cost in blood and treasure.

[robowombat]

Islam will always be the state religion of a 90% Muslim country. The question would be how much willingness to have confessional freedom. The Saddam, regime, interestingly, allowed a wide degree of confessional freedom, except for Jews of course. The number three or so guy in his regime. Tariq Aziz , was a Jacobite Catholic.