„Thirteen years after the war in Iraq, Britain remains deeply ambivalent about its involvement in the US-led intervention as part of the ‚War on Terror‘ in the post-9/11 era. The war has cost us dearly in blood and treasure and many wonder: was is worth it? Imagine the counter-factual scenario of Iraq still being ruled by Saddam Hussein and all the implications entailed. Would the country, as many critics suggest, be in a better state today had we not toppled the regime? We will never get a definite answer, but there is ground for legitimate speculation based on the regime’s history of aggression and the political and economic climate in the early 2000s. (…)
Policy makers never had a choice between peace and war in Iraq. It was a country often referred to as a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave beneath. Without the US-led intervention in 2003, the Hussein family would likely still be ruling from Baghdad. We would not have been confronted with the set of problems created by the war, but we certainly would have faced a different set of problems nonetheless.“
(Julie Lenarz: „What would have happened if we had never invaded Iraq?“)