not many people seem to think we should have overthrown Saddam and all that
But i think we just didn't do it right. When we go in, we should just totally take over everything (to the winner go the spoils) and then, once there is no serious threat, we can hand things over
Just the opposite.
Back before we invaded Iraq, I heard an interview with a man that had spent some years living in Iraq, and operating a U.S. sponsored library in the capital. And he said that many young Iraqi men were coming in every day, hungry for information on how a democratic government works; particularly the style of democracy practiced in Europe and the U.S. But most of them could not read english, and there were almost no books written on that subject in arabic.
This man tried hard to convince the Clinton and then Bush administrations that if we would just send as many books as we could print into Iraq, written in arabic, explaining the basic functions of a democratic republic, we could have fueled a revolution that would have toppled Saddam without our having to send in one single U. S. soldier. They were that curious, and desirous of real democracy, and they already had a relatively free market economy.
But of course our government ignored the idea. Printing books doesn't make any money for the military industrial conglomerates that own our politicians. So they had other plans (and now we all know what they were). So nothing was done about the books. And a nation was destroyed. And ISIS grew up in the rubble and hate we left behind.
There are lots of different ways to "nation build", but guns and bombs are not one of them. Because you don't win the hearts and minds of anyone while your killing members of their families, and their neighbors, and their friends, and destroying their homes and businesses.
