The Greek King Epirus, after what you might call a Phyrric victory, coined the phrase "Another victory like this and we're lost." We're not going after Iran during President Bush's time in office.
It was State (Bremmer et al) that "ran" Iraq for over two years after Iraqi Freedom, not the US military (unlike Germany and Japan for 7 years post-WWII), so we know where the responsibility lies for whatever mistakes were made there from summer 2003.
State ran the reconstruction (right into the ground), but security aspect was entirely handled by the U.S. military. The reconstruction failed, in large part, because we couldn't maintain security outside the wire. That made an already mismanged reconstruction effort impossible.
Other than that, your post is a lot of wishful thinking.
I don't see Shi'as and Sunnis killing each other and destroying each other mosques as Pyrrhic victory... sure they are a bit slow in filling daily kill rations (gangs in Rio kill more per diem without any talk about Civil War), but still it's a good example to other Muslims of who their real enemies are and who can be their friend and help free them from tyrants if only they have will themselves.
We're not going after Iran during President Bush's time in office.
A lot depends on this election, but if Republicans do reasonably well for mid-term elections and keep control, which I fully expect (turnout, turnout, turnout!), then Iran may just be as surprised as al-Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan, and later Saddam in Iraq, that we went after them militarily and not criminally, i.e. UN sanctions game is just a prelude and legalities, just like it was with Iraq.
Nobody was under the impression that we knock Saddam out ("win the war in Iraq") and then leave it to al-Qaeda or Iran to take over. We didn't do anything similar in Germany (or Europe in general) or Japan, and WWII immediately evolved into Cold War with some of our war-time allies. And Germany was entirely bombed out and defeated well beyond what we tried to do in Iraq from the outset. Germany was also already into 7th year of the military actions and lost millions of its own people. The two thing that keep up "insurgency" in Iraq are Iran (funding and supplies of technology and personnel) and Democrats in US (political attacks on their common enemies and potential for getting into position of power and providing them political and propaganda victory and possibly a military one, if we withdraw).
State ran the reconstruction (right into the ground), but security aspect was entirely handled by the U.S. military.
Not really, locally military was pretty much under control of CPA which was run by Bremmer and he had overruled several major operations that were proposed by the military - under the "hearts and minds" programme mindset. Sure, military could take it upstairs to Rummy and Powell in D.C., but that would not only lose valuable time but in most cases DoS would be given latitude.
Other than that, your post is a lot of wishful thinking.
Well, it's consistent with what I see happening in the big picture, and consistent with the "Pentagon's New Map" by Thomas P. Barnett (PDF or JPG maps can be downloaded from ), which has been influential in Pentagon. Iran's client states and organisations (Syria, al-Sadr, Hezbollah, Hamas etc.) fall apart and starve financially, except for ability to cause minor low-intensity mischief, after regime change in Iran, so it doesn't make sense to divert our major resources and attention on them unless absolutely necessary (latest example was Lebanon).
The rest is just a sense of unrelenting panic sponsored by Democrats and developed and propagated by media. The polls are just one tool in their arsenal to influence public opinion.