My recollection is that the Iraqi people did their own nation building, wrote their own constitution, and the US mostly just provided the muscle to keep the country stable as the new institutions grew. The people themselves braved the death threats to go out and vote, etc. It was a hopeful experiment, not at all nation building or social engineering as that term is understood. Obama’s pull-out in 2011 was abrupt, without consulting with the Iraqi government, which wanted some residual presence, and without any regard for the region’s stability, which Obama soon after began destroying with his insane support for the MB in Egypt, etc.
The Middle East was screwed up long before the League of Nations got ahold of it, which is why the Ottoman Empire was so easy to disassemble in the first place. It had a final collapse coming long before 1789, when Napoleon easily defeated their once-invincible hordes in Egypt. It wasn’t just gunpowder. The Ottomans had that in 1513 when they defeated the Mamluks. Naturally, any solution that anyone came up with was doomed to become FUBAR. The real problem in the Middle East is the f@#$#@ing Islamic fanaticism that continues to infest it.
In the words of that great poet and philosopher William Joel:
You may be wrong, but for all I know you maybe right
We are all just human. We don’t know everything. The difference is that limited government conservatives understand the limits of human understanding and good intentions and want to limit their jackass neighbors control over their life. In the meantime statists don’t believe in God, they think they are God.