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A big part of the problem is we sided with the Shites. For whatever reason, they are not good soldiers. Which is why the minority Sunnis held power in Sadaam’s Iraq.

With regard to foreign entanglements, the US has a habit of siding with the majority. In some cases this is smart. In others (like Iraq), it is not. When you have minority rule in a given country, you really need to ask yourself why that is. In many cases, it may be because the majority is just not fit to hold power.

All the libs who were for the Iraq war insisted that we side with the Shi’ites. I would have insisted on siding with ourselves and (at least) the Kurds and regarded the main Sunni and Shi’ite groups in Iraq both as the enemy. So we ended up with the utter madness of having the Islamic Dawa Party (who was exiled in Iran for years) take over the region, which was in and of itself a de-facto takeover by Iran.

Both the major Sunni and Shi’a groups there practice national socialism. The Ba’ath party is national-socialist in particular, and they are friendly with both Sunni and Shi’a (Bashar Assad’s Alawites, for an example of the latter). It is not for nothing that Sun Tzu pointed out that in cases where you know yourself but don’t know the enemy, every victory you gain will be matched by a defeat.