Ethnic and religious strife only existed in 2004, and in 1991 the Sunnis and Shia were all singing kumbaya by the fireplace. The Kurds have never desired independence and their (rightful, IMO) share of the oil that is so rich in Kurdistan, and resource management would not have presented a problem in 1991. A dissolved Sunni Iraqi army producing well-armed unemployables in a Shi’ite Iraq, “de-Baathification” producing a similar phenomena for experienced civil servants, and marginalized Sunni and Chaldean Christians would never have been problematic in 1991 — only in 2004. Oppressed Shi’ites in 1991 wouldn’t have gone bananas at the prospect of power, and by no means would they have gone full metal Islam. An inexperienced, weak, and emergent Iraqi National Congress would have done just fine managing these (and other) complexities, which took even large, well-financed countries like the US by surprise. Gee, I guess those Iraqis really hated GWB — kind of petty of them to, all of the sudden, have all these proximate causes and deep hatreds that led to the state of affairs from 2004-06.

The only advantage that I’ll concede vis a vis regime change at an earlier date than 2003 — and it’s a thoroughly Machiavellian advantage, so I doubt you’ll find it such — is that, if we had deposed Saddam following the 1991 uprising, we could have left without the damnable “pottery barn” doctrine being shoved in our face after the inevitable meltdown occurred. I still have no idea what benefit would have accrued from us invading, who would have supported us, or how that would have done anything but further enable Iran (which is reaping dividends from the deposal of a secular, aggressive neighbor in favor of a weak, Shia-majority and religiously-tinged government).

See, I don’t blame Boooosh for not being the Kwizatz Haderach — I don’t expect a governor with little prior foreign policy experience to predict the future in Iraq or manage a war with great success. I find the idea of the Clinton team (which was quite hawkish about the war) avoiding these problems and managing the war with excellence absolutely ludicrous. I do find fault with fools like Bill Kristol, who — having lived through the experience of unsuccessfully shilling for a continually-deteriorating Iraq — have learned nothing about the experience. They still think that societies bounded by a medieval religion (and not much else), and with very few positive civil institutions, or experiences with secular, democratic governance, are going to do anything but revert to Hobbesian existence when given the chance. It took Europe and the US 500 painful years to go from burning witches to electing them in a Republican primary. Centuries of shared cultural experiences, and hundreds of years of successful cultural and religious traits and taboos, undergird democracies in the developed world. How many failed states must the US taxpayer pay for before the Kristols of the world realize the differences between the Western world (and their pupils in the East) is yet vast? I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of US taxpayers and soldiers babysitting countries with 400 years of barbarism, and no internal desire to change.

when they find that a top-down approach to civil institutions doesn’t work.

Unsurprisingly, most people don’t change their views on their own civil institution unless pressed to it, or unless they are pre-disposed to reject them due to strong personal conviction. Most of the latter are more open to the idea of immigration or becoming attached to political entities that better match their views (which explains in part why American immigrants from broken countries tend to be superior to their folk back in the mother country). The rest? Well, they don’t change unless pressed to it. Turkey (the high water mark of Islamic-majority democracies) was the result of vigorous, homegrown, and painful secularization on the part of a national hero, Kemal Ataturk, and his followers, and the cultural movements that preceded it. It was borne of the unique situation in Anatolia (which was directly ruled by the Ottomans), and the trade which passed through Constantinople and the rest of Anatolia.