The enemy then and now, the enemy that presented an existential threat to the United States was Iran not Iraq but our misguided invasion of Iraq means even today that we do not have the stomach to deal with Iran. This is not simply a Barack Obama problem, although he is utterly hopeless and possibly treacherous, this was also a George W. Bush problem. Bush simply would not use military force to stop Iran getting the bomb. Was that a result of being burned in Iraq? There might've been a military justification then to engage Iran but it seems now to be beyond our reach militarily, politically, diplomatically and even morally.
The tragedy of the Iraq war extends not only to Iran but to the present chaos in the Mideast which will only worsen beyond our worst nightmares when Iran gets the bomb as it inevitably will. That war in Iraq has so many downsides attached to it that it is impossible to identify all of them or to assess their degree of harm. Consider one: Barack Obama was spirited into the Oval Office and identified as a genius because he opposed the Iraq war when competitors like Hillary Clinton voted for it. But Barack Obama did not oppose the Iraq war because he saw something that few others could see, he opposed the Iraq war because he was ideologically reflexive, he was and remains an opponent of the interests of the United States believing us to be font of evil in the world when we project power. In office he has done everything he can virtually everywhere (Afghanistan not excepted) to prevent or distort the application of American power. Not only did the Iraq war help put Barack Obama in office, it has provided him justification, a cover with which to pursue his ideology.
It is not a question of who is at fault for Iraq as these pundits debate, it is a question of properly identifying America's national interests and aligning those interests with viable solutions, some of which inevitably must be military in nature. The Iraq war has made that process almost impossible.
