The article got that part correct. In "real" conservative hideouts, we would have destroyed the country and let someone else "rebuild". Oh, and yes, we should have sucked them dry of oil since we were accused of that and many in the world still believe it. I call it war reparations. Personally, I don't give a damn about any Muslim, living or dead anywhere. So putting them firmly back into the 8th century without any means pay their way in the world completely works.
What you say makes sense for Afghanistan. I was always of the let’s bomb em and leave party. Should they let Al Queda back in and build more camps, no biggie; bomb them again. But it doesn’t apply to Iraq. Bombing their gubmint out of business would serve no purpose. They had nothing to do with 9/11, didn’t harbor Al Queda, and actually could have been better used as a Strong Man to stand against more fanatical, less anti-Western blocs like the Iran Gang.
Unless you really, really bought into the WMD thing. But that was only ever half the casus bellies at most. The other half we couldn’t address directly, because Bush the Younger had run against Clintonian nation building. I’m convinced erecting a US backed and to a large extent controlled “democracy” in the heart of the Middle East was the main goal. Because since WWII that’s the only way the Powers That Be can imagine keeping the peace, aside from world gubmint.
Bombing and running would not have a nation built. And without nation building the entire effort was futile. Unless, again, you bought the WMD rationale. Tge trick, by the way, was not yo outright lie about them. I’m not saying there were no WMDs. We know there were at some point, since Saddam used them. The lie was that they posed an imminent threat. Apart from the specious and question begging argument for war from Iraq breaking the 91 truce (why enforce it now, instead of any if the number of alleged breaches between the two Iraq wars?), there was no oldfashioned Just War reason for Iraq, Part II. So they had the WMD thing, because nation building for its own sake never seems enough of a justification for ground war, though for some reason we can go to war in the air when fancy takes us.
Whoops, I meant more, not less, anti-Western.
A real Conservative would never have gone into Iraq because real conservatives would have recognized that GW Bush was a fraud and never to be trusted! A Real Con would have learned to never trust any Bush after what GWHBush did when he was mistakenly elected in 1988.