How did 9/11 lead to Iraq ?

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I do remember being at school and hearing about the war in Iraq and years later learning about it, I do feel in some way a war we didn't really want even though it got rid of Saddam Hussein who I feel should have been got rid maybe 12 years earlier after he invaded Kuwait not 12 years later. I don't know how the September 11th attacks led to a war in Iraq when I feel really it had nothing to do with them. People may argue with me about that but that is how I seem to think. I remember a gulf war documentary and it was saying that the Americans wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes made in Vietnam and to help the Kuwaitis, kick out Saddam and leave with minimal casualties but there were some people who felt like wanting to press on to Baghdad and get rid of Saddam once and for all but in the end they couldn't.
This feels like a controversial topic but I'd like to hear some of your opinions.

Nine-Eleven led directly to the US invading Afghanistan because that was the 9-11 attackers base of operation.

Then George W. Bush used the 9-11 attacks as an excuse to invade Iraq as well, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. So he got two wars for the price of one attack on the US.

But also Ben Ladin had long been offended by the presence of the American 'infidel' forces in Kuwait and in the Person Gulf so close to the sacred soil of Islam (Saudi Arabia). So there is that too.

Why did W want to invade Iraq? Ostensibly because Saddam Hussein was developing nukes.

The Bush administration claimed he had nukes, because Saddam himself said he was doing that, and he said that because his own people claimed that they were hard at work on a nuclear program. Turns out that Iraq's "manhatten project" was a scam being run by Iraqis living off the dole for doing nothing...causing the dictator to lie that he was getting nukes...causing our government to lie to us to get us to support the second war. Lie wrapped in a lie wrapped in a lie wrapped in a lie.

Daddy issues. Seriously.

Dick Cheney promised a war in Iraq and he was gonna deliver it.

9/11 made it a lot easier to sell the war to the American public. The Bush administration falsely claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. With 9/11 fresh in peoples minds efforts to scare the American public by conjuring up images of a nuclear 9/11 worked.

I recently had a revelation when thinking about politics and how it all sounds like BS.

See no one really knows why Iraq or Afghanistan happened.

Or the reasons.

I have heard many "explanations", but none that would make it clear why war and invasion are necessary.

Afghanistan was invaded several times over history. Taliban is definitely not the reason or Bin Laden or anything.

Those are hardly things that can be resolved by invading a country.

I think of most of these wars are simply led by establishing a pro US government.
A government that is democratic, but has a deal with US.

So my revelation is that when it comes to US policies we should talk about geo politics.
The difference between politics and geo politics is that in geo politics a country is running policies that are about establishing sphere of influence and power extension as well economic influence that generates profit.

You can as the same question for instance why US invaded Cuba.

Why US invaded any country.

Its always to establish a pro US government that allows financial deals with US.

Three thousand Americans dying is NOT a reason?

Afghanistan WAS invaded so we could kick Ben Ladin's ass. W, as POTUS, HAD to do SOME thing in response to the 9-11 terrorism. And there never was any 'profit' in the US owning Afghanistan. And thats the problem. Once we had forces there...and we had the Taliban on the run to the mountains...we were stuck. Had no where to go but to expand the mission to 'nation building'. The Taliban was gone. So there was no government. So ofcourse we had to set up a replacement government. And one that was pro American and so forth. So we were stuck in an untenable situation there. Which is why Biden recently just pulled out of the country.

Ironically that was exactly Ben Ladin's aim. To deliberately get the US bogged down into a Vietnam type quagmire in a "muslim nation...either Somlia, Yemen, or Afghanistan"...according to intercepted Al Queda communications.

But the roots of 9-11 go back further- to the Reagan 80s, and the last stage of the old Cold War.

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan to set up a pro Soviet puppet government there. The Jihadists were drawn from all over the Muslim world to help the locals fight the soviets in a guerilla war. The US decided to take advantage of the situation by sending stinger missles to the Afghan and Jihadist rebels to create a 'reverse Vietnam' for the Soviets. These Jihadist became the Taliban and Al Queda, and would later perpetrate 9-11 on the US. So if you go deeper then -yes the Afghanistan invasion by the US had its roots in the 'geopolitics' of the end of the Cold War between the two superpowers 20 years earlier than the 9-11 attacks.

Basically, in our mania to screw with the Soviets, we enabled the Taliban to emerge.

A lot of the reasons stated above seem correct - that both we, and the UN weapons inspectors, believed Saddam was hiding WMD's. We also were lead to believe that there were Al Qaeda training camps in Iraq. It might be the first big land war in a while, at least that I'm aware of, where we went in on circumstantial evidence, and which Colin Powell who was out leading the charge later admitted that he was lied to.

There was also a Chappelle skit with Paul Mooney (Negrodamus) where he was asked if Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and yes said 'Yes... we have the receipt'.

I get that we propped up Hussein to be a buffer between Iran and Israel and the more time went on the more the Baathists and particularly Saddam Hussein smelled of Stalinism, which got our Soviet era heckles up as well.

I've heard another theory since - that Saddam Hussein was looking to break out of the petrodollar system and trade oil in Euros instead. That on its own could have been a significant influence if true.

There’s very little geopolitical advantage to Afghanistan for the US. It’s a very poor country, with a challenging geopolitical situation, on the other side of the world.

Historically it was interesting to the Mongols, the Persians, the British Empire and the Soviet Union (and the rest) because it was next door. They were expansionist empires, but even if they weren’t, all countries are affected by their neighbours.

US involvement was directly due to 9/11. The world thought that the Taliban were sheltering al-Qaeda. Look how many countries joined the coalition.

As for Iraq, combination of Saddam being a really awful man, intelligence suggesting (erroneously) that he had WMDs capable of being used, and a heightened fear of terrorism after 9/11 pushed Bush and Blair into invading.

Yes, the West generally believes that democracy is a good thing and wants to see more countries become democracies. But if the US was overthrowing governments purely so it could have a better relationship with the new government, it wouldn’t choose insignificant countries like Afghanistan. Venezuela would be an obvious one where installing a friendlier government would be hugely beneficial both to the US and to Venezuelans (if, as neocons tend to do, you ignore the human cost of the war). It also isn’t bordering Russia or China, so no concerns there.