We would have been better off patching things up with Saddam and rearming him. Would have been a lot cheaper, lot less people would have died, Islamic radicals would have lost a big fun party and the Iranians would be scared shitless.
That argument has been made by more than a few people. Stephen Kinzer wrote an entire damn book about it. I think it comes down to this: - US Foreign Policy is largely imagined and carried out by career bureaucrats, not elected officials - Those bureaucrats work for the CIA and the State Department - Iran has been carrying out a successful proxy war against the CIA and State Department across "South Asia" since 1978 It's interesting. Everyone figures that any olive branch thrown at Iran will immediately be smacked down by AIPAC because what's good for Iran is obviously bad for Israel without recognizing that culturally, intellectually, historically and all but rhetorically, Shia Persians are the only muslims in the whole goddamn Middle East that don't give a fuck about Jews. Fuckin' Cyrus the Great was the first ruler to tax the Jews, rather than attempt to wipe 'em out... and all sorts of Jewish sects took refuge in Persia during the Arab conquests.