One of Kaplan's tenets (and he bases it on a long list of thinkers going back to the Greeks) is that a straight border is an imaginary border.

I think we often mistake the arbitrary borders of the Mideast as evidence of a lack of knowledge and understanding on the part of the post-WWI architects of the modern day borders. I think it's evidence of the exact opposite. I think that they knew exactly what they were doing by lumping various tribes, sects, and ethnicities together under a single flag. Essentially, it was a cynical plot to ensure that there would never be anything like domestic cohesion in any of these regimes, and that, therefore, they would perpetually be client states of the West.

Saddam had the audacity to think outside the territory that the West allotted him. That was his sin. It wasn't as if he suddenly turned brutal at the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq conflict, in which we were all too eager to supply him. It wasn't until he violated the territorial integrity of Kuwait that we suddenly heard all about his chemical attacks and nuclear aspirations.

Although, cynical, at least it was a policy. The Neocons seemed to have forgotten this history--which they seemed to know quite well in 1991--as of 2002. Maybe they saw it as a chance for a reset. They had already imposed sanctions that they couldn't very well violate easily, but there was still wealth to be exploited. They needed a reset. Unfortunately for them, W was very ideologically committed to democracy. I think his lip service to it was actually genuine, so Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, et al. toed the party line for the sake of expediency. Left to them, I think a new dictator would have been installed quickly, and the result may have been different. Layman's speculation.