[Ithekro]

Saddam wasn't alone, but he was the only one to have crossed the line to the point were the US public would be willing to send in forces to beat him down. (He was an ally only because he was fighting the American, British. and Arabs new enemy, Iran, who has also been an ally up to that point. The change was crossing the line into Kuiwat. Prior to 1978, Iraq had been a Soviet ally.)

What did the US get out of it? In the actual war part of it, things felt pretty good. The US military kick the ever loving crap out of a dictator we didn't like and we got some entertainment from that one public relations spokesman in Bagdad saying the US troops were no were around while things exploded behind him. The war part went pretty much how the Americans like their wars to go. Fast and victorious.

It was the aftermath that bogged down public moral as the US forces were not up to policing a country, nor did the reconstuction happen all that well (poor to no planning outside of pocket books). That is what turned us off. That and the reminders from casualties (still far less than Vietnam) from bombs mostly.

Hindsight is a wonderful and yet terrible thing. Especially the Arab Spring. Do we know if that would have even happened without the US invading Iraq? No one seemed to see it coming at all from what I recall. It just sort of happened.

For all we know, if we did nothing, today there would be a war going on between Syria and Iraq due to the Arab Spring, or if sanctions were still ongoing in Iraq, a combined set of problems as the news would still be going on about nukes in Iraq and Iran, with Israel's right-wing government hopping mad that we aren't doing anything about either of them.