The issue of de baathification of the military was always a a double-sided argument.
It is not difficult for the overwhelmingly Sunni Iraqi military officers to point to de baathification as “the heart of the problem” NOW.
And yet, if the U.S. had NOT agreed to de baathification, the Shia majority and all their militias (and they do represent some 60% of the Iraqi people) were prepared to be quit of their cooperation with the U.S., and that was when the U.S. was still fighting in Iraq on three fronts - against Al Queda, against the remnants of the former Iraqi military still hoping to resurrect Saddam’s regime, and against the sectarian militias fighting the U.S. and each other.
Without de baathification of the military it cannot be said for certain we would have produced a democratic government of any kind - the Shia leadership would not have supported it. Then what? No one knows.
So yes we know one of the risks we took with de baathification, but we do not know where we would have gotten to without it either.
The worst part of de baathification was also carried out in two ways that were sought by the Shia political class; too quickly, and with too much regard for rank (high) as qalifying for dismissal and too little regard for behavior. Maliki then made things worse as prime minister, by making military appointments by choosing cronies over experience.
Key thing though, is that through the ill intent of Mr. 0, we abandoned Iraq before it was politically stable—even though yes, we had won the war militarily.
Mr. Obama was determined to lose the peace though, and so we—and the whole world—have.