It worked in Japan and Germany.
It was working in Iraq.
The much maligned GW Bush waged a just war in Iraq against Saddam's thugocracy that was in the process of starting WWIII in the Middle East.
Bush's victory in Iraq was one of the most amazing and successful military operations in history and the casualties on both sides were minimal.
After winning, Bush's post war occupation was probably the most restrained of in recent history and pretty much followed the precedents learned from WWII .
In a region of the world where there is still bitter hatred and animosity for wars fought 700 years ago, Bush and America were seen as liberators helping to free Iraq and provide a better future. Never before has a defeated enemy had as much good will for their winning adversary.
America fought hard to liberate Iraq from the foreign al Qaeda invaders and ex Saddam dead enders and finally defeated them with the help of the Iraqi people.
America won the war and then won an even harder fought peace in Iraq thanks to the sacrifices of our soldiers.
George Bush left office and gave Obama a success in Iraq and Iraq was on its way to becoming a normal and more prosperous country.
Obama came in and willfully delivered Iraq into the hands of its enemies.
The Shia half went to Obama’s buddies in Iran and the Sunni North was delivered into the hands of Obama’s buddies in the Muslim Brotherhood's ISIS army.
I know this because former U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney predicted this all the way back in the early 1990s when he explained why the U.S. never conquered Iraq during the 1990 Gulf War.
Cheney's decision to act against his own better judgement in 2003 was one of the worst military and political decisions ever made, and this jug-eared dope in the White House right now can be directly attributed to that decision.
I agree. Textbook example of how to use Military to defeat Saddam. Everyone goes back to the successful campaign that saw Saddam statues being overturned and the excitement of many in Iraq. Even Dems were all for it at that point. The occupations stage got ugly where we underestimated the hostility between different sects of Muslims (which is why there will never be peace with Muslims since some are the very strict militant muslims that interpret the only way is to kill non muslims. Again, Bush doubled down and had helped solidify, the situation. Obama’s pulling out totally blew up the hard fought victory.
Finally, the one thing that everyone missed with taking the war to Iraq and Afghanistan, was that it preoccupied our enemies and funnelled all the action in those places, they didn’t have time or chances to focus actions against USA itself. Our withdrawal has now allowed them to refocus on proactive targets in the U.S and Europe vs fighting defensive war in Iraq and Afghanistan.