2003, the Iraq War and a Kurdish government

The Iraq War was an illegal intervention by the United States.

That there were no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons found in Iraq suggests that "weapons of mass destruction" may have been an excuse for regime change in the face of an unstable-looking Saudi Arabia. Had Saudi Arabia imploded without the Iraq War, the United States would have lost its monopoly on oil in the Arabian Gulf.

There are pundits who suggest that while the Iraq War was partly about oil, it was partly also about protecting the interests of Israel. But after Saddam's government was toppled, a pro-Iranian government took its place, leaving Benjamin Netanyahu more paranoid about Iran and Shi'ism than ever.

Neither Iraq nor America were ready for Iraqi democracy in 2003. It was only after the painful lessons learnt in 2014 - when ISIS invaded Iraq - that Iraq now has a chance for real democracy. In the aftermath of the ISIS invasion, however, the Shi'ite Arabs have an even stronger hold over Iraq: they militarily control Sunni Arab areas - without as of yet rebuilding their infrastructure - and the Shi'ites occupy the Kirkuk oil fields. The US wresting control of Iraq from Iran will be a project that will last decades.

The option of dysfunctional democracy, however, was not the only option for the United States in 2003. In 1991, after the Gulf War, during a debate about invading Iraq, Dick Cheney noted the following:

“[O]nce we'd … gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place. What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or [Shiite] government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists?”

(At the time in 1991, Dick Cheney adamantly opposed any invasion of Iraq, and his reasoning was sound.)

In any case, installing democracy in Iraq fueled the instability in Syria, sparked the flames that ISIS later fanned and, to top it all off, gave Iran an important ally in its Shi'ite crescent. Could have the US installed an Iraqi government to benefit its interest more so than the government installed in 2003?

Yes. The US could have installed a Kurdish government.

Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Sunni Arabs, a minority in Iraq, have controlled the unstable region with an iron fist. This idea of the ruling minority is not unique to Iraq: the Al-Assad family, though from the Alawite minority in Syria, rule over its Sunni Arab majority.

The Kurds have no homeland. The Sykes-Picot treaty ensures that the Kurds will remain a minority group stretched across Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran without a homeland for the foreseeable future. The only way to guarantee the creation of a state across traditional Kurdish lands would be to destroy the Turkish state and annex northern Iraq, Syria and western Iran. It is not going to happen.

But in 2003, the US forces could have catapulted Iraq's Kurdish minority into power at the expense of its Shi'ite majority and Sunni Arab minority. If such a government had been installed by the US, the Kurds would have reversed the policy of Arabization of traditional Kurdish lands, such as Hawija and Kirkuk. It would have been able to repopulate such areas by bringing in Kurds from Iran, Syria and Turkey - which would also have eased the Kurdish problem in those countries.

While short-term causing Iran and Syria headaches and greatly upsetting Turkey, in the long-term the Kurds would have been forced to move out of Syria, Iran and Turkey and into Iraq. Such immigration would have solidified Kurdish hold of Iraq, much like Shi'ite immigration today from Afghanistan and Pakistan has solidified Shi'ite control of Iraq.

Even had the US withdrawn from Iraq, ISIS would have never been able to take control of Mosul and never been able to genocide Iraq's Christian or Yazidi minorities. This is because Nineveh province and Mosul city would have been too close to Kurdish territory to be tolerated. But bloodletting between Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs would have been much worse, and the majority of the ISIS war would have been fought in the south of Iraq rather than the north. Many thousands more Shi'ite Arabs would have died in such a war which, while terrible, would have meant Iranian proxies in Iraq would have been weakened after the war on ISIS instead of strengthened.

A Kurdish-controlled Iraq would have not been entirely unpopular in the Arab world either. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf nations were terrified of Saddam's Iraq, and a Kurdish Iraq would have remained a block against Iran and posed no threat to Kuwait or any Gulf territory - only a threat to Iran, Turkey and Syria, none of whom are great allies of the Arabian Gulf.

Iraqi-Israeli relations would have been quiet for a considerable time period, as Saddam's Iraq was a champion of the Palestinian cause and, though Kurds champion the Israeli cause, too overt relations between Israel and Iraq would have created a terrorist epidemic among Iraqi Arabs unlike any seen thus far.

Baghdad would have become a city and province populated by Arabs and Kurds alike. Though initially seeing a surge of sectarian bloodshed, security from Kurdish forces would have been tight and would have forced Iranian and ISIS proxies out of Baghdad and into other areas.

The reason this option needs to be discussed is because any military action accomplished by a nation must be thought through with a careful and deliberate outcome for the day after. Perhaps it was essential to US interests for Iraq to be governed by a US-friendly government. But it was not essential to install a Shi'ite-dominated democracy into one of the most unstable countries on Earth, and one which was unable to protect its Christian and Yazidis from slaughter and genocide.

Though a minority, the Kurds would have had a better track record at protecting its Christian and Yazidi minorities and providing security for Iraq. They would have acted as a bulwark against Iran and been turned into a Kurdish country by Kurdish immigration from Syria, Turkey and Iran. Escalated violence between Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs would have been unavoidable, as it is in Iraq today, but as the violence receded, it would have been a far friendlier government in charge than the Iraqi government of today, and one more likely to protect US interests for the future.

The next time the US wages war on a Middle-East government, it must think very carefully about its policy for the day after. Or else terrorism will only grow and never recede as the US continues intervening in the Middle-East.