Thinking about Iraq and the paths we have taken.

Our debacle in Iraq has lately seemed to be entering its endgame that will result in some sort of tactical victory for us but at a huge cost.
This entire war many hold could had been a lot shorter had we made the right decisions right at the beginning and not made mistakes like disbanding the entire army and trying to make it anew.
Yet was a debacle in Iraq inevitable as the invasion which is argued in the link in the title?
Even if we had done all we could off too maintain the state and reform it, would Iraq still travel down the same road?
The state that was defeated was essentially broken by sanctions when we found it anyways so one could possibly understand why Bremer dissolved it and the Iraqi army.
Yet what might of happened had we not done those things?
The Iraqi army would of been able to at least keep a lid on the looting and all those wonderful things that happened across the country post invasion but would they of done it like they usually did with force and brutality?
The Iraqi officer core would also be cause for concern because they might of kept their shia and kurdish countrymen out of their ranks and cling to their power.
It is also doubtful that anyone could really have stopped Al-Qaeda and the rest of the foreign fighters from entering the country and without competition from the former Ba'athists they might of formed a large part of the developing insurgency and if they were pressed early enough might of incited the sectarian violence sooner.
It is also doubtful Iran would enjoyed a Sunni-dominated Iraqi army and would most likely support the Mahdi army and the other shia insurgent groups.

So it seems that in the end it is doubtful that we could of ever really entirely avoided all this bloodshed, even if we took a radically different path.
It really does seem that that because of the confluence of things that converged in Iraq preventing all the things was likely impossible.

Yet because hindsight is 20/20 there are plenty of other things in hindsight that could prevented plenty of bloodshed.
Had Europe stood up to Hitler WWII as we know might never of happened.
Had the Little Ice age came later or the vikings settled Greenland earlier North America may of been populated by descendants of Norsemen and we would be writing in a viking derived language.
Yet in hindsight I think that greatest opportunity in all of history that was missed was probably our ability to prevent the cold war right after WWII.
If we could of knocked out Stalin and the rest of the ruling clique of the Soviet Union at that time and collapsed it then we could prevented the whole conflict right then and there and established a true Pax Americana and perhaps a effective world government to boot.
Had this prevented Mao from taking power and possibly killed off Mr. Kalashnikov then the few million from the bomb and the aftermath would of been offset.
But we didn't because we aren't like that, we don't betray former comrades in arms after the most destructive war known to mankind. We were truly reluctant to become the leader leader of the free world as we still are today.
The consequences of collapsing the Soviets in such a way would also taint us in the eyes of the world, as would ensuring the Pax Americana.
So when we ask ourselves what our role is in the world and look with depression at the rise of the twin Asian giants of India and China who will shape the world we live in a way not seen since our own rise.
But remember there is only one path and that is that we take but we can take more then one path.