Does china realy count?
China won't fight. It wouldn't want to fight anyone, and nobody would want to fight them. Seriously, they have a nuclear stockpile of about 20,000, a militia-army of 2 million strong, ties with North Korea that are about the best solution to the nuclear thing, super-hackers... oh, and huge economic clout.
If the us was after Iraq's oil, they've seriously bungled the job.
Yes, that's the point. The US
suck at interventions. Look at Vietnam. Communist. Afghanistan. Wrecked. Iraq. Unstable. [insert other country]. [insert seriously undesirable condition].
Several good reasons: Remove a dictator from power. Advance US' interests in the region. Give the Iraqi people a democratic government. Kill/Capture Bin Laden. Remove Iraq as a base of operations for terrorist organizations, namely AQ.
*sigh* Yes, removing a dictator from power is a just cause. No, it was not why they invaded. They invaded under the
pretext of WMDs, despite the fact that the UN found none. They invaded for the oil.
Give the Iraqi people a democratic government.
Unfortunately, the "Iraqi people" are mostly too dead to vote.
Kill/Capture Bin Laden.
That was Afghanistan.
Remove Iraq as a base of operations for terrorist organizations, namely AQ.
By infuriating yet more Muslims? Nope, not gonna work.
But let's steer this away from the Iraq war.
So, WW3. Here's my scenario:
Iran finishes its nuclear project. Saudis start whining, also acquire nukes. Iranians fight Saudis. Iranians attack Israel. Israel and America pulverise Iran. Israel horribly damaged. China and Russia mobilise to defend Syrian interests. Europe stays neutral. America tries to get Japan to fight China. Japan fails horribly to dent the Chinese.
China calmly stops trade with America, crippling the US economy. US desperately mobilises India. China mobilises Pakistan. EU presented with a horrible dilemma: support its old ally, America, and face crippling losses of oil, gas and just about everything else, or abandon the USA for the PRC and Russia? China it is.
Somebody, somewhere, does something stupid. A nuclear weapon is used. DEFCON one. Lat Am split. Huge nuclear exchange leaves East Asia, America, Russia and possibly Europe carpeted with fallout.
But that won't happen, because not everyone is stupid.