Unintended consequences

Joe Conason:

Here’s an outstanding example of what conservatives like to call the law of unintended consequences, an axiom they often cite to mock liberal initiatives. In this case, the neoconservatives promised that military action would implant secular democracy, install a government friendly to the United States and Israel, and stabilize a region critical to Western economic security. All of this would be accomplished without spending an American dime—or so they claimed—because Iraqi oil would finance the entire project.
Hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives later, what we seem likelier to get in Baghdad sometime soon is an Islamist government, tied to the theocratic regime in Iran, divided by ethnicity, religion and province, and embroiled in a burgeoning civil war that could embroil Iraq’s neighbors and sink the region into turmoil.