Being on the side "kept in check", believe me, we were better off on ourselves. Dictators fall one way or another, 3rd party military intervention is rarely selective and not a bit subtle with the collaterals.
That’s a difficult position to be in. It’s lose-lose. Dictators can last generations and drive countries needlessly into the ground (Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Cuba, North Korea, etc.) Interventions are blunt instruments (interestingly some US Democrat candidates put forth the idea of intervening in Honduras... Democrats...)
The size of the losses aren't the same, though. Saddam was by no means a benevolent Dictator, and he had plenty of people disappear, tortured and executed. But not nearly anywhere close to the number of people that died because of the Regime Change campaign.
And don't forget: a dictator usually keeps order. A civil war, ISIS roaming through the no-mans-land etc is much worse than a cruel strongman.
I hear you. But I just want to add one more perspective, when there is an intervention, the intervening party (US in this case) technically aligns with someone from the conflict. That might be a political oppositional force, it might be a national majority, it might be a region which is or is not a part of a country. Usually there is already some kind of conflict going on. I don't have any data, but from my own experience, a lot of people are not with either side, and they suffer greatly. It might be because of the sheer despair of the situation or the "oppressing" or "opposing" force. And don't be led to think that the force supported by the US plays nicely without war crimes, offence and with pure motives. Sometimes the party supported by the US has it's own agenda which aligns with the US and it is just beneficial to be supported. I guess that it makes sense and the great US wouldn't be the US without that kind of strategy.
This went political, and the topic was ecology. As this wasn't bad enough, this all goes with a huge ecological toll which impacts a broader number of people than those involved in conflict.
