Quagmire Redux
Just as likely as the rose-colored Rose Garden scenarios regarding Iraq is this scenario.
Local Iraqi insurgents combating the American occupation and what they consider a puppet regime continue to increase in numbers, as foreign fighters stream in from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan, Egypt, Iran and elsewhere. We’re forced to escalate our troop numbers, just as happened in several stages in Vietnam. The government declares that each new infusion of U.S. troops will ‘finish them off by Christmas," but the larger American presence only fans the flames of the insurgency.
Violent incidents between the Sunnis and the Shiites lead to full-scale battles between those religious factions, further complicating the situation.
Some of the foreign fighters, now fully trained and better equipped, return to their home countries and help lead Muslim revolutions, tipping the balance in countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Joining with Iran in a loose confederation of theocracies, these Islamic nations drive the U.S. out of Iraq with a massive invasion, then install a religious regime. American citizens are forced to watch another scene of a last desperate helicopter leaving from the rooftop of a country we had no business being in. The Islamic confederation puts a choke-hold on oil for the U.S., thus crippling our economy.
The bloody purge of infidels, "Westernized dogs," and collaborators that follows leaves millions dead in the region. Americans wring their collective hands and wonder how they could have made such a tragic mistake, costing so many lives, ruining our economic well-being and further besmirching our international reputation. The only winners (as in Vietnam) are the defense contractors.
(In 2032, having forgotten the lessons of the previous two generations, and flush with new defense contractor money, some hot-shot cowboy-brained administration decides to invade oil-rich Venezuela. And so it begins again ...)