Re: Time machine

I see your point. I have to agree with you in part--it's a profoundly messed up part of the world, and there's not much we could do to undo that. (At least nothing that would do so quickly.) Moreover, like you say, it was a bad, bad place pre-invasion, too.

For mess-avoidance, though, I'm thinking really selfishly: keeping us out of the mess. So, I'd set the time machine for 2002-03, when the war drums were being beaten. That was when we had a chance to do any number of things, including to

1. Ignore the problem entirely and lift sanctions and all other efforts at containment/isolation
   
2. Invade the country on the twin assumptions that Iraq had WMD and that we would be welcomed as liberators
3. Stay the course with sanctions and such
4. Attempt to build an international (and indigenous) consensus for changing Iraq along the lines we wanted
5. Actually plan for whatever we would later decide to do

Obviously, we chose (2) by itself. I'd set the time machine for the last moment when that choice could have been averted. Granted, it might make more sense to go back earlier--root vs. proximate causes, and all that--but this is more clear cut. That it also gives us less time to kill our grandfathers and cause rifts in the fabric of space and time is a bonus.

Basically, I used to be an optimist, too. I'd go back to the point at which it became clear that my optimistic optimal, though unknown, course had diverged from reality.