@InfraBlue,
I think the difference in the objectives is a matter of degree, but we can disagree on this.
As for the Iraq war, greater care could have been taken supporting a particular group prepared to take control once Saddam's regime was ousted, but it would have been up to the Iraqi people to form a stable, functioning nation for themselves.
The supposed reasons for invading Iraq are basically four fold:
1) Eliminating Saddam's ability to threaten our security and interests with WMDs
2) Eliminate any future threat to our security and interests by eliminating Saddam and his regime
3) Liberating the Iraqi people from the iron rule of a brutal dictator
4) Establishing a bulwark for democracy and American interests in the region.
#1 and #2 could be accomplished without an extended occupation and nation-building efforts
So could #3. The power vacuum left by the removal of Saddam and his regime could have been partially addressed by pre-invasion efforts to put a successor government in a position to fill the void, and a limited period of occupation to prevent the worst excesses...although we failed to do even that initially.
Obviously there would be no guarantee that such efforts would be effective and they certainly would not have eliminated the potential for internal strife once the military objective had been accomplished. However there was never a chance that Cheney's fantasy of the people throughout Iraq lining the streets to cheer their liberators and then peacefully getting into the orderly business of establishing a democratic government, would be realized. As we know, there is a rather large contingent of Iraqis who benefited from Saddam's dictatorship, who were going to feel very insecure with the previously oppressed majority gaining the upper hand. Bush & Co should have been aware of this prior to the invasion.
Most revolutions result in a period of chaos, and in Iraq we did the work of a revolution for the Iraqis (or more accurately the Iraqi Shia and Kurds). I doubt there were many of even the most ardent opponents of Saddam who while welcoming the toppling of Saddam, wanted the US to stick around for years, building their nation.
In any case, if Saddam was honestly perceived as a significant threat to US security and interests (which is of course a source of much debate) then the liberation of the Iraqi people need not have been a goal. A side benefit perhaps, but not a requirement. That a majority of Germans, initially at least, supported Hitler didn't mean that he presented a threat to the US or that we were prohibited from attempting to take him down. This of course is not to attempt to equate the threats presented by Hitler and Saddam, but to illustrate the premise that military action against a perceived threat doesn't require the endorsement or benefit of the people of the targeted nation. Perhaps all the ballyhoo about liberating Iraqis made the job much more difficult than it made it more palatable to Americans.
#4 clearly required an extended occupation and nation building, and it was the attempt to achieve this goal that resulted in the majority of US casualties and is very close to being proven a complete failure.
Actually a number of Saddam's supporters and henchmen did survive and helped organize the Sunni insurgency, but it wasn't long before the "enemy" encompassed foreign jihadists and Shia militias and they have learned the lesson that they need not achieve major victories against an occupying US force, simply keep bleeding it and cause random acts of terror and the American public will eventually tire. The Vietnamese taught us this lesson decades ago but we failed to learn it then and I suspect we won't learn it now.
Too many clever young men in Think Tanks expanding on Clausewitz' definition of War.
