Your call is unduly pessimistic.
You do not give enough credit to:
Unless these unfavorable factors are accounted for, things naturally look like incompetence on Bush's part.
Notwithstanding all of which, the Surge still worked, requiring Obama to throw the war in broad daylight.
I have only one questyoion about anything working, LG.
If you had been a commander in iraq during bush’s 6 years , was there any point in time when you would have permitted your troops to walk into town to go to a restaurant?
I appreciate your even-tempered post. /salute
Even if those were factors, and to some extent they no doubt were, they were dwarfed by the fact that Bush did not tell the truth about the true nature of Islam. He was the one who pushed Religion of Peace down America’s throat. We know that to be 100% false.
Knowing what we know today, if Saudi Arabia sank one of our Aircraft Carriers in the Gulf, would you send American troops in on the ground, expecting that all we needed to do was kill every member of the House of Saud, and elections would then make that a nation a Western style democracy, just with camels and kebabs? Or would you basically bomb it to shit from 30,00 feet and be done with it?