“And, as a Trump supporter, he was wrong on this. We had the game won in 2007-8 before Zero destroyed the victory.”
And what did we win? We didn’t keep territory. We didn’t keep the oil. We got pretty much nothing for our effort except trillions in bills, thousands of dead Americans, and a middle east that is even more screwed up than it was before we walked in. Yes, Zero deserves a large part of the blame for blowing it. But there was nothing much to win before that.
That’s precisely what we won: we had bases. We had an ally (weak and needed propping up, much like France and Greece in 1945), and we COULD have had some of the oil, quite legitimately. Most important, we had a jumping off point right at the Iranian border. That was worth billions, and, yes, was worth the lives. Patton said he didn’t like to pay for the same real estate twice. Well, we will. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to buy that real estate again.