Not exactly.
I'm saying that the failure to do those things is not explained by "Obama" or by "Democrats", because both of those things are EFFECTS, not CAUSES.
The cause is giving the voters a say in the way their armed forces are deployed and used.
As I predicted right here on 9/13/01, George W. Bush chose to fight a Vietnam war in South Asia, IOW, a war to make a point, to demonstrate that we were tough, and serious, but that, at its foundation would demonstrate that were were a friendly and a generous people who meant the enemy no lasting harm.
This stupidity, of course, produced a catastrophe even worse than the radical Congress of 1974, which itself was caused by similar geostrategic incompetence.
The American people will not tolerate wars like Vietnam and Iraq. That's all.
Scenarios where we elect a government that actually STAYS in a place like Vietnam or Iraq without crushing the enemy to the point that they willingly, even eagerly, submit to our will are just mental you-know-what, because that never will happen.
Interesting, but I disagree with you about the reason we went. I don’t think it was to show we were tough or to make a point. I believe there were a lot of valid reasons to go which have been hashed and rehashed in posts like this ad infinitum. I won’t go into them in this post.
I do want to elaborate on your point about the American people and their backlash which produced the radical 1974 congress and also allowed Obama to come to power in 2008. Perhaps that is the Bush’s administrations biggest failure. That is to say, to not pin so much on the WMDs (there were a number of other valid reasons) and also to better prepare the American people for the task at hand. The other huge mistake was Bremmer and his de-Bathification of the whole country. When we de-Nazified Germany after WWII we did not simply dismiss all former Nazis from power. We got rid of the worst, but the beauracrats underneath we kept to keep a somewhat functioning country. This should have been done in Iraq, especially the military part. We let that Army disintigrate and that is why we have a lot of the problems in the Iraqi army even today.