A mere illusion. He was paid off on those other issues he capitulated on, in favor of his pet theories. But his pet theories won’t threaten the Left in any substantial fashion either.

A tool that can be bought, if you know his preferences and likes.

I discussed the lack of consensus on OIF in my post, too.

It was expected that factions on the Left and Right would oppose Bush’s liberal response to 9/11. The one group Bush needed for his strategy to have a fighting chance was the endorsement of American liberals, except they – with rare exceptions like Joe Lieberman – betrayed their principles and decided it was more profitable to be power-grabbing Democrats.

I think it’s overlooked how much the anti-Bush misinformation at home, legitimized by the Democrats, warped the overseas views of his foreign policy. The ME liberals didn’t buy in because they distrusted Bush. When asked why, their reasons echoed American anti-Bush misinformation. If ME liberals refused Bush’s agenda because American liberals discredited it, it’s to be expected the ‘Arab street’ would be more skeptical.

Maybe if it had been all-systems-go at home, Bush’s strategy still wouldn’t have worked. After all, Bush said a peaceful liberal transition in the ME was a process that would require generational patience. That may have been too much to ask regardless. But we don’t know, because Bush’s plan was sabotaged at home before it could be honestly tried over there.

All that said, Iraq was not just any ME country to us. We were in a situation with them. What was the better alternative to solve the Iraq problem? The IR realists among conservatives have re-imagined Saddam into some kind of benign watchdog of Iran, but I don’t see any alternative that includes Saddam in power and noncompliant ending well.

If we reject the “Bush’s neocon strategy”, aka muscular Wilsonian liberalism, of intervening to galvanize change in the ME and don’t believe ME liberals can independently effect reforms, then Obama’s post-Arab Spring strategy makes sense. Ie, try to kill off the worst of the Islamist terrorists, wait for the Arab Spring victors – whether Islamist or other – to consolidate their control over their countries, and then deal with them like the autocrats they replaced.

I too remember the purple thumbs and smiles of Iraqi’s in early elections in Iraq. At that time I was hopeful, though whether those smiles were over democracy or at finally being able to select the tribal/religious leader they preferred, I could not say.

You may be right that had we stayed in Iraq as we did S. Korea, the outcome would have been different. But there never was a consensus of American opinion on OIF and so arguably it never had a chance. IMO, its prospects at this time are dead.

And, IMO the primary reason for that is the incompatibility of Islam with democracy. As evidence, I offer Turkey, with was exposed to generations of democracy and where as long as a secular government was retained, democracy managed to survive if not thrive. But even under those conditions, Islam destroyed democracy.

I added this to my post:

On January 30, 2005, a harsh critic of Bush and OIF rethought his views after witnessing the Iraqi people risk their lives to vote and joyously participate in Iraq’s first free election.

The Americans soldiers who served in Iraq during that time often cite their roles protecting and facilitating the Iraqi election as a highlight of their military careers.

Today, after the partisan vitriol poured onto OIF followed by disappointment with the Arab Spring, it’s fashionable to say that the social-political culture of the Middle East is incompatible with liberal reform and President Bush was wrong to try.

I’m not ready to admit that liberal reform in Iraq is a pipedream. As a soldier, I served in South Korea 50 years after the GIs who fought the Korean War. They were disillusioned by the Korean War and had the same doubts that liberal reform would ever take hold with the non-Western Koreans. But it did. From the beginning of OIF, experts and government officials cautioned that we must have patience because liberal reform and nation-building is a process of change that requires a long time nurturing – a lifetime, perhaps more than a generation – to bear fruit.

South Korea’s first free presidential election was held in 1987. The difference is we stayed to protect and influence South Korea after the Korean War. We’ve left Iraq, and now we can only hope we did enough so Iraq will resist anti-liberal influences.

Thus the argument that Bush was partially right is too complicated for the political roughhouse of soundbites which form the basis for the votes of the indoctrinated, low information voters who currently determine elections.

Take away support for Bush’s neocon strategy of imposing democracy in ME cultures, while retaining the false premise that Islam is a religion of peace and you are left with a hamstrung, ineffective policy.

We are in a cultural war. A civil war involves bullets…

There isn’t anything I can think of on the horizon to suggest a change of direction. It will get worse and liberals coming collision with reality is the only hope that they will start to awaken. Currently, there are not enough of us, nor am I optimistic. Nor is there reason to be.

C. Yes.

The Benghazi attack has been defanged as an issue because people buy into the foundational premise of Obama’s foreign policy, ie, President Bush’s foreign policy and Operation Iraqi Freedom were wrong, so by that fact itself, a foreign policy that is designed to be anti-Bush and anti-OIF is right.

Of all of Obama’s foreign policies, his Libya policy has been the most explicitly framed to the public as a deliberately designed anti-Bush/anti-OIF policy. Since the people have accepted the premise that Bush/OIF is the wrong way to do foreign policy, they have also accepted the Benghazi attack as a tragic but ultimately acceptable cost of business of avoiding Bush/OIF.

This is why, among other reasons discussed on this blog, it’s very important to keep beating the drum of rehabilitating the narrative on the Bush administration and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Do you truly want to hold Obama and his Libya policy accountable for Benghazi? Then you need to expose the fundamental flaw in the foundation of Obama’s foreign policy. Convince the people that Bush was – in fact – on the right track with his Iraq policy, and that by deliberately going away from Bush’s foreign policy, Obama thrust American foreign policy on the wrong track.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/world/middleeast/iraq-war-offers-lessons-for-syria-and-iran.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0

In response to the NY Times article on the 10th anniversary of OIF, I observed (@ http://learning-curve.blogspot.com/2013/03/10-year-anniversary-of-start-of.html ) that “misconceptions about Operation Iraqi Freedom have confused policymakers in the Obama administration. Their chief operating premise seems to be the dogma that OIF was wrong, while their chief animating principle seems to be to avoid an OIF-type situation at all costs. This bias has thrown Obama’s foreign policy into disarray. In August 2004, Tom Junod wrote a compelling piece on President Bush and Iraq for Esquire magazine titled, The Case for George W. Bush i.e., what if he’s right?. With the confusion of Obama’s foreign policy evident, I believe it’s time to revisit Junod’s question: What if President Bush was right?”

I’ve said it here before and I’ll say it again: As long as Republicans run away from championing Bush’s legacy, especially with Iraq, they will concede the strategical moral high ground to the Democrats and President Obama.