I disagree. Saddam had to go. He was working on getting nukes. W’s mistake was thinking we could push Jeffersonian democracy on a bunch of backwards people.
The CIA should have taken Saddam out once we had a western friendly, controllable benevolent dictator waiting in the wings. We should never have allowed a nanosecond of power vacuum time.
Yeah, we’d be forcing our will on another nation. We already did that and we did it all wrong.
Of all the countries in the ME other than Israel, the Iranian people are probably the only ones evolved enough to actually take care of themselves post mullahs.