Easy to second guess Bush now. We had a variety of views here at the time but mainly I think we missed the big picture. None of us could have foreseen a closet Muslim president helping to empower the MB, ISIS sponsored by Sunni elite, etc. Bush gave him some of the precedent to do that. Bush’s nation building was not too different from the Arab Spring and may have helped feed it.
I do not think it is second guessing Bush.
We have to realize that Bush and co. convinced us that Muslims were just like us, and that all they needed was Democracy. Can anyone honestly argue, 14 years later, that there was any scenario that would have allowed for the population of Iraq to have created a government that was anything other than an Islamic theocracy of some form? Even the Constitution we helped draft confirms Sharia as the root of their law.
It is bad enough that Bush, at best, ignored council that tried to warn him of Uslams rejection of Democracy, and its bloodlust. That he refuses to even acknowledge that the RoP crap ws 100% bunk, should be confirm his ignorance and hubris. And our naivete as conservatives.