Iraq war will haunt west - Emma Sky

[TheCurmudgeon]

What I keep coming to is the need to accept that engaging actual people becomes extraordinarily difficult when the engagement begins with you invading and conquering their country. It makes an already difficult process infinitely more difficult.

As a general rule I would agree. In the case of Iraq I disagree. By using the term "their country" you assume the population has an interest in seeing the current regime continue. That they are vested in it. That they find it legitimate. I don't believe that was the case prior to the invasion in Iraq. I believe that the majority of the population wanted Saddam and his sons out of the picture. I believe that manifest itself in the relative good will we have in the three to four months after the invasion.

We hosed it up, but not because of the decision to invade. It was the decisions on how to handle it afterwords that screwed us. In my opinion to walk away from this believing that the right lesson to learn from Iraq is that it is better to just sit on the sidelines and do nothing would be misreading the autopsy.