“Admit it, Bush attacked the wrong country.”
No, he did not. Attacking Saudi Arabia was out of the question. It would have destroyed the world economy. Meanwhile, Iraq had violated the cease-fire agreement that ended the first gulf war, and the fighting there brought in extremists from Saudi and Iran to die fighting us.
We were not attacked by a GOVERNMENT in 9/11, but by terrorists. Those terrorists came to Iraq to fight, and we killed them there, keeping America safe for a decade. It was the right thing to do.
The biggest goof up was the attempt to wish a democracy on Iraq. A better result would have looked like Iran under the shah, before Jimmy Carter got cold feet on supporting that because the shah wasn’t always making his sausage in the cleanest possible manner.
Which is a lesson to extremists of all stripes. Turn too hard on a not very good friend and you might end up with a stark enemy.