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I fought over there as well.

I also paid close attention to the Islamic conquest of Lebanon before I went in.

In order to accomplish anything lasting, one would have to block Islamic religious leaders from issuing fatwas and enforcing sharia law. Sharia law guides people's thinking through fear and forcible establishment of rote behavior patterns.

That would pretty much require a surveillance state with strictly enforced borders. If you can show we were willing to establish such a surveillance state, and empower the people to throw off Islam then we can debate.

If you want to babble about one alphabet Islamic front being okay and some other one being not a problem then thank you for your service but no, you didn't learn enough about the area to assess how to change it.

Iraqi occupation was a waste because we weren't willing to force changes to to power structure which would prevent orthodox Muslims from simply killing all the populace who became westernized after we left. The people who understood the area predicted that this would happen after we withdrew and it has. We weren't willing to be brutal in a situation which called for a certain amount of intractability.

"Iraqi occupation was a waste because we weren't willing to force changes to to power structure which would prevent orthodox Muslims from simply killing all the populace who became westernized after we left."

It seems that you, not me didn't learn enough. What happened is that after we left we lost our influence with the Iraqi government. Oh, for sure there were a lot of mistakes made along the way in Iraq. However, at the time we left Iraq it was on it's way to a somewhat stable nation state.

The Shia are the majority population in Iraq, but Sadaam was a Sunni and the minority Sunni population ruled with an iron fist (through Sadaam) for a long time. After we left, Malaki and his people were no longer restrained and the sectarian violence increased against the Sunnis. Maliki was either unwilling (my guess) or complicit in this. ISIS rose in response to this and was initially supported by the Sunni population. The attitude was, hey they are psychos, but they are our psychos. The genesis of ISIS came from Sadaam's Fedayeen forces who got religious. Their spiritual leader and inspiration as Zarqawi killed in 2006 by our forces.

Iraq is back to where they were circa 2009 - 2010. A fledgling nation state with a nominally democratic government that is functioning. The violence is down, it is working and is not spawning any terrorist groups bent on destroying the Satan of the West (Us). If you think that Iraq is overly religious with lots of Mullahs running around with big followings, then you haven't been to a lot of Arab countries. They in fact are quite secular when compared to other Arab countries. You see a lot more pictures of Sadaam in a suit than you ever did in traditional Sunni dress.

"I also paid close attention to the Islamic conquest of Lebanon before I went in."

So you must have been paying close attention 35 years ago. Thats when that was starting. I should know because I was in Beirut in 1983. Again, you don't have to counsel me, I was there and do understand. Beirut was a completely different situation/time than Iraq or ISIS.