March 19th marks the 12th Anniversary of the ground invasion of Iraq.
Coincidentally the date also marks the 5th Anniversary of the military intervention in Libya.

The two American military operations have much more in common than differences, especially their disastrous outcomes.

Iraq

The Iraq invasion story has been told many times before.
Saddam Hussein was charged with genocide for what he did to the Kurds.
Coincidently the Prevention of Genocide Act drafted in response to that murderous act was defeated by the Reagan Administration who supported Saddam's actions at the time.
Saddam was the New Hitler.

Everyone remembers Bush's "Mission Accomplished" moment, but they often forget how the news media swooned.

PBS’ Gwen Ifill said Bush was “part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.” On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, “The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a—on a carrier landing.”
Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a “hero” and boomed, “He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.”
Bob Schieffer on CBS said: “As far as I’m concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time.” His guest, Joe Klein, responded: “Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me.”

Flash-forward past the disastrous occupation to the current war.
Eight months ago leaders of Iraq were calling the nation a failed state. A U.S. ambassador called the de facto partitioning of Iraq as "Shiastan," "Jihadistan" and Kurdistan.
President Obama recognized early on that reconciliation between the Sunnis and Shias was absolutely necessary to end this conflict, but even Iraq’s vice-president Iyad Allawi admits that there has been no political progress. Washington has finally begun worrying that Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi isn't serious about a political solution.

Iraq today is effectively three different countries, all of which are at war.
There are over 2 million internally displaced refugees in Iraq.

Libya

Five years ago the president told us it was to prevent genocide. Opponents were accused of being indifferent to suffering (as if bombs are the cure to suffering). Once again the press told us that this action demonstrated a shift in thinking.
The evidence of these genocidal actions by the Gaddafi government were proven false by Human Rights Watch, even while the bombs were still dropping.
Nevertheless, the Libya model was pushed as a model for future wars.
Sarkozy and Cameron took a victory lap in Libya. War advocates mocked the anti-war crowd.
Vice-president Joe Biden described the action as a "prescription" for the future.

Currently EU political officials are discussion a military peacekeeping mission into Libya. No one is thrilled with the idea. The ongoing peace talks are a joke.

When 2011 started Libya was the richest country in Africa.
It had not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Gaddafi's Libya had an equal pay for equal work law for women, there were divorce laws, and more than half of Libya’s university students were women. Libya was secular and socialist.

Today Libyans have almost no functioning public services, with daily blackouts and water shortages. The health care system has collapsed.
Libya has two governments, but even combined they don't control all of Libya. The government that the international community endorses is Gaddafi's old army led by an ex-CIA asset who engineered a coup against the same government last year.

The biggest problem in Libya is the near complete lack of security, which has allowed ISIS a beachead.
Everyone acknowledges that some sort of peace talks are needed to end this chaos, however, "the reality on the ground in Libya is that there is no authority to engage with."

And that is how you destroy a country and its people.

What can we learn?

For too many people the only lessons to learn on this anniversary are "don't vote for Republicans" or "don't vote for Democrats". If this is all you've learned then please ignore the rest and go back to your ignorance.

At the very least the lesson should be "don't implement regime change unless you have a plan for what happens after, because YES, it can, and probably will, get worse."

A better lesson would be to question the wisdom of deciding the governments of other nations based on what domestic war-mongers think it should be.
An ever better lesson would be to question any war of choice, by looking at how often they fail, and by their moral bankruptcy.
And maybe the best lesson of all is to doubt the logic of a "humanitarian war", and how killing people by choice is anything but murder.