Quote Originally Posted by Rex Brynen View Post
I don't think this was a primary intent of intervention in Iraq (unless one argues that Iraqi democratization was supposed to have a domino effect of regional regime changes that would result in a raft of new, secular-ish pro-Western governments.. which was never likely).
Notably this. I believe it was the principal of well over a dozen (or slightly more) lesser but synergistic reasons. The 'domino effect' being a far lesser one of those.
Moreover, I think it is demonstrable that the war in Iraq has radicalized a great many Middle Eastern youths who otherwise would not have been mobilized into militant groups, and helped train them for a fight they now pursue in other places (as evidenced, for example, by the arrival of so many Iraq veterans, and Iraqi-insurgent-wannabes, in Nahr al-Barid refugee camp in Lebanon, resulting in the confrontation there last year).
I agree. We probably differ in that I see that as a non-problematical, natural and to be expected result of the intervention that will ultimately be to their disadvantage even though in the near term it does not appear to be so. Such confrontations in the near term as opposed to festering for a few years only to later erupt are advantageous to the west even if they are unpleasant.
Be that as it may, you're there now, and the better it ends for Iraq the better it ends for all of us.
True.