Certainly, if we hadn’t, the Islamist hydra would probably have not taken such root among Iraq’s Sunni population. They had Saddam, after all, and had no need to look elsewhere for protection. A Baathist Iraq would probably still be hostile toward Iran, and the Iran-Syria-Lebanon bloc of Shiite states might not have attained critical mass. Al-Douri would still be at his meetings with Saddam and Qusay, plotting how to slip another case of Johnny Walker Blue around the Oil-for-Food restrictions.

Still, we’re playing with counterfactuals, in which anything could happen. There’s good reason to think the region is better off without Saddam. He was a brutal sociopath, for one thing. Truly an evil leader. What would the Arab Spring have been like in Iraq? Surely, if the revolt of the majority Sunnis against Assad in Syria was genocidal and bloody, the revolt of the majority Shiites against Saddam would have been incalculably worse. You don’t often compare Assad favorably with anyone, but his neighbor was worse. Try barrel bombs filled with anthrax.

There was also the very real sense that the Arabs had suffered tyrants for long enough; that they deserved a shot at democracy, free from oil-hungry outsiders who backed their tyrants.