What you call the "ROP crap" was actually a war aim. The idea behind it was to minimize the number of enemy combatants. I'm surprised that the Sun-Tzu junkies here haven't picked up on it.
Granted that, like all strategies, it made for a bad fit in some circumstances. The Rules of Engagement are unprecedentedly restrictive, and have gotten soldiers killed. [Not just American ones, either: some of my fellow Canadians have been brought back from Afghanistan in coffins.] The overall idea, though, was to convince as many Muslims as possible to not fight - to look the other way when the Coalition troops came in. "I'm not an extremist Islamist, so they are not here to avenge America by killing me. Hence, they are not my enemy. It's not my fight."
If you're interested, one of the reasons why that strategy was decided upon was because Muslims have a track record of fighting each other - something that the Israeli govenment has wisely taken advantage of.
I should also add that, although the deaths of soldiers prosecuting in the War of Terror have been tragic and in some cases arguably unnecessary, the total number of deaths has been far, far lower than in World War 2.
I know there's a lot of criticism of W here over his supposed effeteness. But, as a matter of brute fact, making Islam the enemy makes for over a billion enemy combatants. One billion, over all of the world. The country with the largest Muslim population is Indonesia.
One of my "9/11 mysteries" is why President Bush has been criticized so heavily on both sides when he and his Administration did a solidly good job in the War on Terror. Remember: Pearl Harbor was an attack launched by the military of a country. Everyone knew who was responsible for it. Any soldier of Imperial Japan was ipso facto an enemy combatant, because the attack was undertook by the Japanese government through the Japanese military. The terrorists flew no flags and were not acting as official representatives of an enemy nation. Had they done so, I can assure you that President Bush would have acted a lot more like President Roosevelt.
Granted that nation-building further muddied things, but nation-building is the unquestioned nostrum of the foreign-policy branch of the permanent political class. W can be faulted for not putting his foot down in this area, but he might have decided to go along with it because they were the only experts he had to rely upon. Some things we have to learn the hard way.
Thankfully, the criticism of W here has been more substantive than those inane liberal snarks about him not stopping his reading of "My Pet Goat." (In the real world, we sometimes need time to gather our thoughts when we're hit with something devastating.) I still think he did the best with what he had. Inarguably, his speech on 9/11 was what America needed.
There you go: I'm now a "Bush apologist." I've never met the man, and likely won't, but I still think his strategy has been underrated and he himself is underappreciated.
I appreciate your post. Here’s where I think we see things differently: I respect the “hearts and minds” doctrine behind counterinsurgency. However, it has limited application. I would argue that, in the long haul, it is doomed to succeed in the Muslim world in most cases. This is because you NEVER win over the heart or the mind of Muslims. Underneath any veneer of friendship or cooperation, they ultimately are loyal only to their religious ideology and tribalism.
Does this mean there is no place to try to maintain good relations with an indigenous population while targeting the armed insurgents? No. It is a valid policy, but we should never become complacent in the belief that the populace is now loyal to us and won’t turn into enemies at the drop of a hat.
What I was really criticizing Bush for was two-fold: one, in many speeches to and about Muslims in America, he kept up this drivel about Islam being a religion of peace. He could just as well have left the issue alone or said some nice things about Muslims generally without resorting to an out-right poisonous lie which has not befriended the Muslims but emboldened them to exploit this perceived naivete. Now, every time someone wants to suggest that maybe Islam is not so peaceful (such as the Peter King hearings) they are relentlessly savaged as racists bigots and Islamophobes. Bush greatly contributed to that. Debate is squelched and our people are hampered in rooting out the terrorist cells that are forming right now in American mosques.
Let me make it perfectly clear that I liked George Bush as a person and I appreciated the good things that he did; while they were few, they were important and good. I agree with you that he deserves a lot of credit for waging the war on terror vigorously and successfully for the most part (Only “for the most part” because his success in preventing attacks here is not matched by the failure to capture or kill Bin Laden, obliterate the Taliban and confront Iran and its proxies). I also think he hit grand slams with his nominations of Roberts and Alito. His tax cuts were good as was his generally solid support for Israel against the Palis.
Let me just give you a few top examples of why I think W booted things in general:
1. No child left behind;
2. Prescription drug benefit;
3. Amnesty;
4. Lost his veto pen for 7 years;
5. Dubai ports;
6. Harriet Myers;
7. Failure to fight back against the vicious campaign of lies and distortion about Iraq war;
8. Failure to fight vigorously for his federal judicial appointments;
9. Failure to pardon Scooter Libby the day after he was convicted;
10. Failure to call out the Republican Congress he had from 2002 for their drunken spending and earmark binge.
One last point: despite my criticism, no one should think for a moment that I would even mention him in the same sentence with the present occupant of the Oval Office. George Bush is a decent person who loves his country, but simply turned out to be a misguided mushy RINO. Hussein is an arrogant jerk who hates America and is not screwing things up accidentally, but because of a very deliberate life long ideology. He is not just a bad president, but a truly bad person.