[TheRealThing]

I bought some of the Bush blame early on however that excuse can't work today. I have always respected people that own their mistakes. Our country would be much better off if people in all parties stopped pointing the finger and stopped passing the buck. It would have been easy for Lincoln to blame Buchanan for the mess that preempted the Civil War and give up. It would have been easy for FDR to blame Hoover for the Great Depression and give up. The key? They decided to fix the problem the best they could. Did they make the best long-term decisions? Who knows? But at least they acted.

He there LWC.

And, as you mention, Bush does own some of the blame. His father went in there with General Norman Schwarzkopf and lambasted them like the red headed step childs they were. But, everybody underestimated the suicidal mania that drives the Islamic extremist. Like Ahab, they would gladly shoot their own hearts at the heathen infidels of the west. So, all that show of force just steeled their determination to withstand our superiority, which was and still is like comparing bows and arrows to a mini-gun.

So George Jr and Sr, were wrong in their basic assumption. The shock and awe that should have given them their attitude adjustment, went almost nowhere and revealed that the true scope of the job was to be much more labor and treasure intensive. But, we all learned that truth at the same time, nobody could have anticipated the ultimate Arab reaction. But, once we saw that light, we should have stayed the course, and not wussed out. To me, our main failing was in trying to be too humane. We needed a status of forces agreement with Iraq. This was no time for foreign policy changes that basically ceded US sovereignty. The red flag that the more sage within government circles threw up when America looked poised to elect a novice to the White House in 2007, was well founded. We see that the comedy of errors, characterized by lapses in judgment and unrealistic expectations born of flawed foreign policy initiatives, has basically managed to set the world on fire. The smoke of which first began to ascend during our ill advised support for the so-called Arab Spring.