Since at least 2003, Americans have overestimated our influence in Iraq. Although the U.S. invasion and overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime paved the way for both a bloody civil war and a new form of government, the key actors in Iraq were and remain the Iraqi people themselves.
Most recently, GOP critics of the Obama administration have been quick to fault the White House for withdrawing U.S. troops at the end of 2011. But the incessant, myopic focus of many Republicans on America’s military means is wrong-headed and ignores where the administration has actually fallen short in Iraq.
The decision to go to war in Iraq was a poor one, and the subsequent management of the conflict was, for years, catastrophic. Nothing the Bush administration might have done in its second term could have compensated for the errors of the first. Nonetheless, the Bush administration demonstrated both competence and an admirable ability to learn from past mistakes in its handling of Iraq after the mid-term elections of 2006.