It’s funny when you think about it, really. All the assorted war aims and justifications that we argued about four years ago, but it was the least controversial goal, the one effectively hidden in plain sight, that prevented us from a quick, easy exit.
Regime change.
It was never given as the reason we were going to invade, but if we were going to invade, to cleanse Iraq of WMDs and whatever else we were going to do while we were there, then of course we were going to remove Saddam from power.
We argued invasion - yes or no? - every which way. But nobody argued against ‘if invasion, then bye-bye Saddam.’
And nobody in the Administration made more than a passing suggestion, quickly squelched, that we’d simply replace Saddam with some high Ba’athist general who could command the allegiance of the Ba’athist army. Nor was there a lot of debate over whether we should do that. That was perhaps the only sort of ‘regime change’ that would have allowed us to just hand over the keys to someone else, and skedaddle. Yet there was little if any discussion at the time that that option was one the Administration had apparently foreclosed, and what that meant.
So we knew ‘regime change’ would mean American responsibility to oversee a transition to a new government. Didn’t matter whether the new government was ‘one Iraq under Chalabi’ or a representative democracy, or what: we’d have to oversee that transition to a new government that could look out for itself.
We’re still overseeing that transition. The government still can’t run Iraq by itself. That’s why we’re still there, 44 months after ‘Mission Accomplished.’