What started with one intention under Bush may have continued with another purpose under Obama.
I agree. Bush had an almost naive and innocent vision of the Middle East as a place where what people really, really wanted was a nice civil democracy like ours. Therefore he believed in encouraging movements that resisted the endemic tyranny of ME governments.
But he was completely unrealistic about the ME and the impact of Islam. Islam is a totalitarian political system which sees itsself as the one and only, and which also wishes to impose itself on the entire world, starting with places where it has a history and was once powerful. As soon as the secular dictator lifts his hand, Islam takes over and the state of the population is worse than it was before.
Saddam was a horrible dictator, but people were not being blown up every day by Muslim groups warring for control of this now Islamic state. The US press has even stopped reporting these bombings (there was one this morning that killed some 20 people, and it wasn't the first one this week) because the truth doesn't make Islam look very good and fully reveals our mistake in letting the Iraqi constitution enshrine Islam and letting Iraq be an "Islamic republic." There's no such thing. Islam is tyranny, and unfortunately, the only thing that keeps it from taking over a country is the heavy hand of power.
I think we could probably have enforced a few good years there, but it would have meant taking out people like Mookie, preventing the reestablishment of these Islamist groups, monitoring the mosques and removing those leaders we didn't like...in essence, a dictatorship, even if a benign one. We didn't do that, and now the Islamics are busy taking over places that we "liberated" - look at Afghanistan preparing to put people to death for converting to Christianity.
It's a horribly complicated situation. Now, however, we have a president who loves Islamic dictatorships, so perhaps if nothing else that will at least streamline the process.