The ME countries that were cobbled together by politicians after WW1 were bound to fail. Forcing enemies to live together in a false state is idiotic. The borders were and are just lines on a map...people should have been left to settle among their own kind instead of cramming together groups that hate each other ....idiocy.
We should have simply flattened Iraq and then put in a viceroy and a mercenary army paid for with Iraqi oil revenues.
We do not have the belly for empire... we should not engage in nation building and we should quit trying to force crazy people to live in democracies....they are unfit to live in a democracy and don’t wish to anyway.
We should have just cut a deal with Saddam Hussein and let him conquer Kuwait — and then Saudi Arabia, while he was at it.