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The idea of trying to nation build an Islamic country into a functioning democracy is as stupid an idea as can be imagined. Only ideologues of the utopian liberal sort would believe such hogwash,...

Yes it does sound stupid on the surface. Then you realize that both buildings of the World Trade Center have been taken down, several other large buildings there too, and the world's leading known blow-hard that supported terrorists was still mouthing off in support of terrorism. You also realize you didn't have any troops in the Middle-East at the time, and that if intervention wasn't taken, you would likely see more of the same short-term. Hussein, like it or not, was the most visible proponent of terrorism on the planet, providing $25,000 a pop to the families of suicide bombers inside Israel. He was breaking no-fly zones. He was moving his troops into areas off limits close to his neighbors in violation of agreements. He was still targeting our aircraft in country We needed to make it clear we wouldn't stand by idly while our nation was attacked. We took action.

Look at Iran pre-Peanut Boy Jimmy Carter. It was pro-Western. Women had elevated rights, un-rivaled in the region. The Shah wasn't just pro-Western, he was an actual ally. In comes Carter, works his magic, instant Kalifate. If Iraq had been managed properly, I believe it could have been more of a Pre-Kalifate modeled on the Shah, absent the Shah position of course. Brain trust Bush put a 20 year resident of Iran into the leadership position of Iraq. That was doomed from the moment he did it.

...but unfortunately Dubya surrounded himself with exactly that sort of advisor.

While I do agree with you about the quality of Bush's advisors, I do it for a different reason. Two massive mistakes were made right off the bat. One, they installed the wrong guy. Two, they didn't make an agreement with the guy they supported, to see the U.S. paid back for the war's costs. Iraq had plenty of oil and gas reserves, that could easily have paid us multiple billions in war related reparations. It's hard to fathom how the Bush team could have failed on those two accounts, leaving aside your beefs for the moment.

His father had the good sense to take advice from foreign policy realists which is why he didn’t try to conquer Iraq.

IMO, this could have been what drove Bush to avoid entering Iraq and toppling Hussein. I have always thought it had more to do with the colation with the region's rulers, that they would support U.S. action as long as it didn't telegraph a willingness to topple governments in the process. I think Bush had to promise to leave Hussein in power, just checked from doing more mischief after Kuwait was returned to it's pre-war situation.

I have never faulted Bush for not toppling Hussein. I haven't faulted the follow-on Bush for removing him either.

His less than brilliant son gobbled at the neoconservative trough, and the advisors he chose were true to their liberal roots - they imagined that an ancient society would be immensely malleable and that its underlying religion would be irrelevant. All that was needed to turn Iraq into a western style democracy was their will.

Do you think the people who showed off their purple thumbs were just posturing for the cameras? Look, I understand where you are coming from, but I am not convinced the Iraqis were angry at the situaion the U. S. ushered in.. I believe Bush accomplished something there. Factions settled down, and there was relative peace. If ISIS had not invaded Iraq now, relative peace would have continued. I do think a contingent of U. S. troops should have remained in Iraq, but with Obama that wasn't going to happen. We won the war. Obama lost the peace. Actually, I see it worse than that too. I think Obama armed and funded ISIS/ISIL, under the guise of helping those against the Syrian government. He helped the rebels destablize Libya, Egypt, Syria, and now Iraq. That's quite a feat, especially for a Community Organizer.

It’s the same hubris that Lyndon Johnson possessed when he thought he could turn Vietnam into a miniature United States. The neoconservatives learned nothing from that fool’s errand.

I don't think the goal was to turn Vietnam into a miniature United States. I believe it was an effort to keep the people of South Vietnam free. In those days Communist insurgents would kill massive numbers of thier conquered enemies. Johnson ran his war machine like a true predicessor of Carter and Obama. He was an idiot. Given free reign, Nixon would have concluded that war. Congress fought him every step of the way. Congres was single-handedly responsible for about half the casualties in the war. Nixon would bomb the North. It would be reeling, and Congress would demand a cease-fire to negotiate in good faith. That would fall through, and Nixon would bring the hurt again. Again he would make headway, and Congress would jump back in to defeat victory. Congress turned out to be the North's best ally, after Jane Fonda, John Kerry, and the hippies of the day. These entites could not allow the Right to win the war. If Johnson couldn't, it couldn't be shown that a Republican could. IMO, it was about that simple..

America’s finances are in terrible shape. Dick Cheney would have us borrowing even more from China in order to police the Middle East. Time for him and his ambitious GOPe daughter to just go away.

I think his dauther is DOA poitically. She should be. Expect to see the GOPe try to inflate her once again. Please realize that we had no troops in the Middle-East when the Trade Center attack was launched. We are going to have to fight Islam. Better to do it off our soil than on it. The cost here would be a lot highter in the long run.

“Then you realize that both buildings of the World Trade Center have been taken down, several other large buildings there too, and the world’s leading known blow-hard that supported terrorists was still mouthing off in support of terrorism. “

I’ll tell you what I realized. That every one of those 9-11 terrorists was in this country due to our incredibly lax attitude about immigration and visas, an attitude that Bush 43 had in spades. In fact all Bushes seem wedded to this idiocy.

All of the 9-11 terrorists were either Saudis or Yemenis, not one was Iraqi. In fact not one Islamic terrorist in the previous 40 years had been an Iraqi. Iraqis weren’t players in the world of Islamic extremism.

Saddam Hussein was not even a mildly observant Muslim. He was about power. He modeled himself after Stalin right down to the mustache. Christians went about their lives unmolested in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. That hasn’t been the case since his removal and Iraq becoming an Islamic state.

We went to war with Saddam Hussein in 1991 because he invaded Kuwait, which had nothing to do with Islam. It was just a naked grab of territory. Saddam imagined that he could become the ruler over a great Babylonian kingdom. He was driven by ambition, not Islam.

Israel had bombed Saddam’s Osirak nuclear reactor back in 1981. By the time of the Kuwait war in 1991 Saddam had still not retaliated against Israel. That’s not exactly the hallmark of a terrorist state. It’s the hallmark of someone afraid of starting a war with a country that can hurt him.

“IMO, this could have been what drove Bush to avoid entering Iraq and toppling Hussein.”

Bush went to war with Iraq because he believes democracy has magical powers, a belief shared by the fools he chose as advisers. It is nothing more than warmed over Liberal Internationalism wedded to coercive utopianism. A bizarre mirror image of Islam’s habit of imposing Islam on others- the democracy worshippers believed it was their obligation to convert the Iraqi infidels for their own good so that peace and love would break out along the Euphrates.

“I don’t think the goal was to turn Vietnam into a miniature United States. I believe it was an effort to keep the people of South Vietnam free. “

We were doing both. See if the fantasy that American “social scientists” were peddling back then sounds familiar:

“The new South Vietnamese state, [Fishel} concluded, would overcome both the colonial legacy and the communist threat. With US guidance and support, it would seize the moment to build a nation where none had existed before.

Fishel’s interpretation reflects the extent to which US social scientists and policy makers envisioned nation-building in South Vietnam as part of a universal process of modernisation that, once it gained sufficient momentum, would become an inexorable force, sweeping all before it.”

http://viet-studies.info/kinhte/Nation_Building_VN_TWQ.pdf