Yet Another Controlled American Intervention Experiment

The best guess of Iraqi casualties in Iraq War 1.0 from 2003 to late 2011 over about 8-1/2 years when America withdrew was something over 120,000 dead. American liberals said it was our fault and that our combat role just made things worse.

Guess what the Iraqi death toll in Iraq War 2.0 from June 2014 to December 2017 to expel ISIL from Iraq with only a small American support presence and no American ground combat forces in direct combat was?

That would be 100,000 (Scroll down to "Iraq"). In 2-1/2 years.

So on a per-month basis, Iraq War 1.0 killed almost 1,200 Iraqis per month.

For Iraq War 2.0, that would be 3,333 per month. Without the horrible American presence that needlessly killed Iraqis--as the global Left asserted.

Huh. That's odd. It's almost as if "responsibly ending" the Iraq War by bugging out of the country at the end of 2011 was a huge mistake--R2P-wise.

I've already noted the different American approaches that Iraq War 1.0 and the "leading from behind" bombing-only Libya War gave 

And let's not even get into the 350,000 who've died so far in Syria which we tried to stay out of to avoid making things worse, as our government argued in March 2012. Assuming nearly 7 years of fighting, that's nearly 4,200 hundred dead per month.

Seriously, America doesn't cause bad things to happen. We're the only damned hope of containing them to a dull roar.