Eli5: how did America actually destabilize the Middle East in the Iraq war? What was done specifically that caused all of the chaos in the countries we were involved in?
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Iraq in 1991 – We wanted Saddam to leave Kuwait. Once he did, that basically ended the war. The powers that be and structure of society generally remained the same, aside from in Iraqi Kurdistan, which got a quasi independence.
2003 – The US was revolutionaries. It turned Iraqi society upside-down. The Baath party had been in charge for over 40 years. Anyone who had any sort of significant role in government or administration had a connection to this political party (Iraq was a one-party state). And the US kicked all of them out of the government and demobilized a very large army. The Sunni sect was in charge before the war, the shi’ite sect was empowered afte this revolution. Also, the result of this revolution was anarchy and a lot of fighting.
New people were empowered through elections and after a lot of fighting, things started to settle down, but lots of years of insurgency led a lot of Sunni fighters or former Baath elite to go to Syria as refugees; when civil war struck there, many of them were involved in forming ISIS.
No invasion of Iraq (or no major revolution after the invasion), no ISIS.
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