That's part of the equation. We can't afford for Iraq to become like Afghanistan or Somolia, a power vacuum allowing bona fide terrorists to operate with impunity. Once you take out their only real government, well, you broke it, you bought it.
Not necessarily. There's no law that says we have to nation-build.
We didn't bother at all in the Mexican War. Sometimes the intent is to do nothing more than kick someone until they stop being a pest.
Actually, the problem with Afghanistan was not that the terrorists evolved in Anarchy, but rather with Government support.
As regards: AFGHANISTAN --
As Dana Rohrabacher reported to Joseph Farah, President Clinton incubated the Taliban regime in Afghanistan for at least three years, despite the fact that it was harboring Osama bin Laden, was responsible for growing 60 percent of the world's heroin and denied basic human rights to the nation, a U.S. congressman charges.
"In 1997, the Taliban overextended themselves," he says. "Thousands of troops were captured in the north. Much of their equipment was destroyed by the Northern Alliance. Nothing prevented the opposition from taking Kabul. The Taliban was more vulnerable than it ever was before."
The most overt source of Clinton Administration support came in late 1997, when the Clinton administration backed a plan to funnel money to the Taliban to reward them for fighting the War on Drugs, which eventually resulted in approval for a 1998 policy of funnelling $25 million a year to the Taliban government -- apparently viewing Taliban support in the War on Drugs as worth the cost of their support for a nutty fella named, ahem, Osama bin Laden. Tragically, this support for the Taliban continued into the Bush administration, which funnelled an additional $43 million to the Taliban in early 2001. As noted in the article, "The equivalent financial impact on the U.S. economy would have required an infusion of $215 billion. In other words, $43 million was very serious money to Afghanistan's theocratic masters."
After the destruction of the Twin Towers, the US Government reversed its policy and went to war to depose the terrorist-backing Taliban. Opium production levels have since soared to the highest levels in history under the incompetence of the weak central government in Kabul -- but I think I'd prefer a weak central government which is unable to control opium production, to a strong central government which actively supported the worst terrorist attacks on the US in history.
As regards: SOMALIA --
Well, the place is a mess. Recently, a pan-Islamist group of fundamentalist militants siezed control of Mogadishu, and are actively contesting with the provisional "Central" Government in Baidoa, which enjoys modest international recognition and some sparse military backing from Christian Ethiopia (a situation which, unfortunately, gives the Islamists the "propaganda high ground" amongst fellow Somalis, who are mostly muslim).
The good news is, However, current and former U.S. officials told the New York Daily News that Osama bin Laden's terror network isn't firmly established in Somalia, though the country hasn't had a central government in 15 years. U.S. Special Forces teams have found no signs of a firm al-Qaida presence, such as terror training camps, sources said. "Probably our worst fears have not materialized," said recently retired CIA counterterrorism official Paul Pillar. If Anarchy is supposedly the most fertile breeding ground for international terrorist groups, Somalia isn't much of an example for the case -- a predominantly Islamic country which has been in a state of Anarchy for 15 years, and still US Special Forces can find no firm Al Queda presence on the ground.
It seems logical to me... if I had a hankering for committing heinous acts of international terrorism, I think I'd have a lot less time for my hobby if were involved in a low-level block war with the neighboring cul-de-sac every other day of the week.
So... how do these situations compare with Iraq, which has seen "Nation-Building" to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousand of US Troops for the last three years? Well....
As Regards: IRAQ --
As a result of the elections certified January 2006, the new, "democratic" Iraqi government is now dominated by the UIA alliance between the SCIRI (Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) party, and the Dawa Party.
Well, who're they, you might ask?
Well, SCIRI is basically the Iraqi wing of the Council for Islamic Revolution in Iran -- YES, the fine people who brought us the 444-day Embassy Hostage Crisis in 1979!! Wonderful people, indeed.
And Dawa? The al Dawa party is also responsible for the bombing of the U.S. Embassy and French Embassies in Kuwait on December 12, 1983 in which six people were killed. While based in Tehran the al Dawa party formed a terrorist wing called the Islamic Jihad. Islamic Jihad and al Dawa were responsible for acts of terrorism against Americans in Kuwait and Lebanon. Islamic Jihad was the germ of what would later become the Iranian backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The 1983 car bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 marines while they slept was carried out by these precursor groups to Hezbollah. That attack on the Marine barracks has been tied directly to Iran through its surrogates such as al Dawa. Yes, the folks who bombed the US Embassy in Kuwait (killing six) and murdered 241 American Marines in their Lebanon barracks in 1983!! And the Bush administration has managed to put these people in control of the Iraqi National Government.
So let's all give a big round of applause for "Nation-Building", and "Islamic Democracy", yeah buddy, hoo-ray.
It works so bloody well, lemme tell ya.
(Apologies for the sarcasm... but, No, I don't think thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars are really "worth it" to advance the political careers of the Iraqi wings of "the Tehran Hostage-taker Party" and "the Beirut Barracks-Bombers Party".)
best, OP