Before the United States went into Iraq in 2003, it is said that Secretary of State Colin Powell told President George W. Bush “You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people. You will own all their hopes, aspirations and problems. You’ll own it all.”

This was later stated in a simplified form to the American public as the “Pottery Barn rule”: you break it, you own it.

No one can deny that Iraq is now broken badly. After its invasion in the ill-conceived quest to find and destroy mythical weapons of mass destruction, the USA poured billions, possibly trillions, into trying to fix Iraq. A new constitution, a new democracy, a new Iraq.

Except … all that threatened to crumble under ongoing sectarian strife, and has broken down terribly under the barbarous advance of Islamic State terrorists.

So yes, although we have been out of Iraq for several years, we still own those problems. We owe it to the people of that country to try again to rep...