President Bush The Smarter Has Passed Away

[Cherub786]

You're still ignoring the larger ramifications of doing so, which, in and of themselves, make going to war in that instance bad policy.  It's true that the U.S. engages in attempts at regime change, but such attempts are almost always covert.

Yes and I mentioned the US should continue to invest in these covert operations to destabilize all the antagonists in the world, especially China and Russia.

Engaging in regime change overtly through the expedient of an unjust war sets you up for the negative consequences that I've already outlined, whereas covert actions are not as likely to do so.   The fact that the U.S. does and has preferred covert attempts at regime change to overt acts of war aimed at regime change undermines your argument because it shows that, for reasons which I've only partially argued, doing so is worse and more harmful to our long term interests than covert action is.

Overt action should be used when it's a soft target, as Iraq and Libya were. 

A quick note about our "allies" and them being largely a group of Arab countries.  That's actually a positive and not a negative as the goal in such actions, including regime change, is to further stability in the region.  Stability in the region is enhanced if the Arab countries in that region are onboard with what we are trying to do in the region via regime change.

Wrong. All these Arab countries are not allies. They serve no useful purpose. Obama did one thing right which is to pivot the US attention to the Pacific region and away from the Middle East. So on one hand the US should continue to build up its naval power in the Pacific and eventually strangle the Chinese by limiting their access and then swarming them by the South China Sea.

As for the Arab countries, all those regimes which haven't already gone (Iraq and Libya) need to go. The US doesn't need their approval or help. One of the aims of the Iraq War was to send a message to the Arab dictatorships to smarten up or they could be next. While Bush was president, those Arab states were genuinely scared.

Now while we're on the subject of the Iraq War, I should note that one thing I was delighted about, as a religious person, was the removal of a secular fascist regime which allowed Iraq to become politically more religious, since Iraq's society is deeply religious and conservative (always has been). The Mahdi Army, SCIRI, and Dawa are the mainstream political parties and they quietly made Iraq more conservative and religious. They smashed the liquor shops and forced the cross dressers and shemales off the streets and into the sewers.