Did the invasion of Iraq accomplish anything, other than making lots of money for

[karynnj]

7. It probably was a factor in the total destabilization of the Middle East

This was the goal of the neocons. A goal that to me seemed equivalent to throwing all the puzzle pieces of a difficult puzzle that you were struggling to put together up into the air and hoping that the puzzle would be easier once you did that. The neo cons were not altogether wrong in initially trying to grab credit for the Arab Spring. (Note how quickly they abandoned that claim as the governments did not magically become idealist, Utopian democracies.)

It also made Iran more powerful and removed the biggest region "check" to it.

You can go back further and ask what was the real impact of the first gulf war, which even people like Senator Lugar refer to as a war for oil, was. Many of the jihadhis were radicalized because we maintained troops in Saudi Arabia.

You can go back further than that, and ask what the effect of the proxy wars associated with the cold war did. It did seem cheaper and lost no American lives to arm the Mujahadims to fight the Soviets.

You can go back further to the colonial times and consider the impact of the British policy of putting a minority population in all the positions of power that they allowed the "natives" to have and then leaving. In places which had democracies, the subjected majority often then became the power. (One example is Sri Lanka.)