Unfortunately they forgot that America is a democracy now, and thus essentially unreliable and weak.

You said, “Everything afterward compounded away from Bush I’s epic error.”

While reading the transcript of the April 1991 HW Bush press conference that I linked upthread, I became angry.

I didn’t become angry when I read Clinton’s stuff on Iraq. But knowing what’s happened, finding out that all the conditions for what’s happened were known by HW Bush at the beginning, and then reading HW Bush’s approach to them – his taking credit for the Gulf War but petulantly denying his errors in the aftermath and kicking the can – I became angry.

It comes through clearly in the contemporary questions and remarks that Bush was in a reasonable position to make different choices at the outset. The right leadership choices regarding Iraq in 1991 were known at the time. But the right choices were harder choices, so HW Bush chose to kick the can.

Agreed ENTIRELY.

I saw it that way at that time.

I was crying.

It’s worse than you think. President HW Bush did see that Saddam was the issue, but he chose to kick the can anyway. The stringency of the Gulf War ceasefire was informed by the understanding that Saddam was the issue.

See President HW Bush’s statements in Remarks on Assistance for Iraqi Refugees and a News Conference 1991-04-16:
http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/public_papers.php?id=2882&year=1991&month=4

Do I think the answer is now for Saddam Hussein to be kicked out? Absolutely. Because there will not be — — There will not be normalized relations with the United States — and I think this is true for most coalition partners — until Saddam Hussein is out of there.
… I did suggest — and it’s well documented — what I thought would be good is if the Iraqi people would take matters into their own hands and kick Saddam Hussein out. I still feel that way, and I still hope they do.
… I’ll tell you what’s the most important thing, however, and that is to get Saddam Hussein out of there.
… We want him out of there so badly, and I think it’s so important to the tranquillity of Iraq that under that condition we might.

Depending on political persuasian, most folks tend to blame either Clinton or Bush for the compounding cost of the Saddam problem and give HW Bush a pass.

First, Saddam of course is to blame for the Saddam problem. But second, HW Bush’s choice in 1991 to kick the can on Saddam set the course with Iraq for Clinton and Bush. Of course we can criticize Clinton and Bush, but such criticism should always be mitigated by the understanding that they were stuck on HW Bush’s course with Iraq. In 1990-1991, HW Bush was in position to do a hard job the best it could be done in the long view, but he screwed it up.

In my opinion, the moment that HW Bush encouraged an uprising by the Iraqi people but then ordered the US forces who were still on the ground in Iraq to stand down while Saddam put it down was the moment that we lost hold of the opportunity to lead the post-Cold War world to Pax Americana.

I have a better understanding of the ‘why’ of the regime change – the war part.

As far as the peace part, building the peace is a longer, generational process. The reasonable standard isn’t mini-me America, but rather enough input of our hybrid influence to be compatible with our world order.

So, is it economy? Culture? Tribe? Religion and sect? History and egacy? All of the above? Or is the bottom-line issue simply – as one of my favorite college professors repeated as mantra – violence works?

I go with the Maslow’s Hierarchy model. Security and stability and dominant control are the necessary foundation. Set that foundation and the rest is a matter of time and pressure (cue Shawshank Redemption). Lack that foundation, and the rest doesn’t work, no matter how many billions you pour into the project.

He also thought he could see normality in Putin’s eyes.

These were world scale gaffs.

Barry has compounded away all of the errors of Bush II, Clinton and Bush I.

It was transparent as far back as 1991 that Bush I stopped too soon. I said so before the echo died.

The psychology of the moment was such that Saddam was in suicidal despair. If the push had continued, his own Sunni officers would offed him. THEN we could’ve settled.

That Bush I didn’t see that SADDAM was the issue is remarkable. Colin Powell strikes!

Everything afterward compounded away from Bush I’s epic error. (throw in Powell)

&&&

That in all this time the DC brains did not come to grips with Islam — from Jimmy to 2000 — is, in retrospect, damnation of the whole lot.

In the USSR, errors of that magnitude requires a change in domicile: Siberia.

Bush should’ve absolutely PURGED the State Department and the CIA and the FBI.

We suffer still because no institutional punishment was administered.

&&&

Failure to punish flagrant wrongdoings is no favor to those spared.

My brother was caught stealing from my youthful coin collection. He suffered scarcely a scolding.

The result has been a totally ruined life. He has no moral compass and is shiftless in the extreme. No matter how great the transgression — he got up to felonies — he was bailed out.

So, he’s never grown up. He’s simply ruined.

&&&

What’s true at the individual level scales up. You end up with wayward arrogant institutional cultures. I give you the Atlanta school system.

So we have a nation still led by the same cohort that’s missed essentially everything of note.

I dread a return of Mitt Romney because he is a manager not a leader.

We need someone with their eye on the far horizon to drag this nation out of its Islamist-Leftist morass.

The only fellow that seems to have a whiff of leadership is Cruz.

The rest of the field is entirely composed of managers.

There is a huge difference — which was spelled out at the Harvard Business Review over thirty-five years ago. It’s such a vital topic that HBR has re-hashed the original to death. You can’t even find it in the Google gush.

http://www.lesaffaires.com/uploads/references/743_managers-leaders-different_Zaleznik.pdf

Correction. It was reprinted in the early 90’s a generation after it hit print.

For regular neo neocon readers — bookmark this pdf.

It’s one of the most influential articles to ever hit print.

It will inform you as to what to look for in politicians — and executives, more generally.

Some situations REQUIRE a manager.

Right now, America requires a leader. Mitt is a manager all the way through. Read the article and you’ll understand the distinction.

You didn’t comment on my point about us catching Muslim countries and letting them go again. If one takes your analogy that Saddam was equivalent to Nazi Germany, it is as if we defeated Hitler but left the Nazi ideology intact only in Afghanistan it was Islam which motivated the aggression and it was Islam that we went out of our way to preserve without interference.

Because Bush was blinkered about the true nature of Islam, he went out of his way to assure the Afghanistanis that we in no way blamed their religion for the crimes they committed in the name of Allah and that we have deep respect for Islam as one of the great World religions. The analogy to that response would be if FDR had told the Germans that he honored the Nazi ideology and didn’t blame the Nazi ideology for the crimes committed by Hitler in the name of the Nazi regime.

Because the Baathists were secular and because Iraq had an ancient Christian population which had lived among the Muslims for over a thousand years, our task in nation building was less daunting in Iraq. Unfortunately, we failed there also.