Just like critics warned back, in 2003, Saddam was one of the things holding it all together. When the dust settles in Iraq, the best outcome will be the 3 entity federalization that Old Handsome Joe Biden recommended. For the region, Syria, Iraq, Iran, etc. — the colonial borders are doomed. And BTW, the ISIS forces are not “al Qaeda-affiliated” any longer, they were too accepting of collateral damages to civilians for al Qaeda. They do however have some experienced military professionals in their forces, thanks to Paul Bremer breaking up Saddam’s army and forbidding the officers from playing any role in the new government. Or maybe not so much “holding it together”, as putting the Sunnis on top in a way that made them at least claim to be supportive of Iraq as a single state (he hadn’t had the Kurds since 1991, and from what I understand the western desert was always essentially lawless). It isn’t like the Shiites or Kurds are backing ISIS – but the Shiites in the Iraqi Army aren’t about to die for Sunnis who resent the fuck out of them. Further evidence that before you destabilize a region in the name of “freedom” you might want to have some knowledge about how bad the potential fallout could be. But that would have meant that the Republicans would have had to perform their due diligence and figured out plans for going in and coming out and I don’t even believe they thought through the going in part very well.
Or they could have listened to Al Gore’s speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco in 2002, in which he talked about Iraq, displaying incredible foresight and understanding of foreign policy, laying out the difference between 1991 and 2002. What Saddam was in 1991 he was NOT in 2002. Gore is so freaking brilliant that he apparently one-upped NostraDamus. To be proven so right all these years later well, simply says that Al Gore should have been President. Very few people had this courage at the time. I don’t think there could be a more genuine leader, a more morally significant man, a more capable man to clean up the mess in America, a more important global figure, a more perfect candidate at this time.
Yes, Republicans could have listened to Al Gore. Instead they were too busy making inventing the Internet jokes and calling him a traitor who doesn’t support the President.