And not only listless now unemployed people, but listless now unemployed people whose only job skill was being a soldier. I mean what the hell did we think they were going to do.

Wait, are you saying that disbanding a country’s security services, throwing the country into lawless chaos with no local force to enforce laws and keep order, and putting thousands of military trained men out of work, is not a good strategy?

Disbanding Baath was far from a dumb thing, the dumb thing was disbanding them, and then just letting them go

We needed them to operate the structures of the government and military. They commanded loyalty from the people under them in the hierarchy. Most of those people - except for the worst of the leadership - should have been given government jobs, a steady paycheck, and amnesty.

Instead the US had to attempt to rebuild all of those structures of command largely from the ground up anew, which takes years of time and tremendous resources. During those build years, you get constant intense chaos and instability fighting you while you attempt to make progress. It was exceptionally stupid.

> Instead the US had to attempt to rebuild all of those structures of command largely from the ground up anew,

The problem is exactly that it didn't.

Instead the US mounted all kinds of compromised personas into power, hoping that they can do without proper state institutes

Removing the heads of power is one thing. Disbanding an entire administration is always a bad thing to do. It only creates chaos. Show me one change of power that disbanded the administration which was successful.