I can’t say I actually agree with that sentiment, but it’s a very poorly written statement and it thinkprogress needs to do better.

Bu I do agree with liberman that Bush is going to be revered by hsitorians in the future. He will be regarded as the best president Israel ever had.

“The fact is that he didn’t see the threat until after the worst attack in US history.”

Bob, can you read? He saw the threat IN THE MIDDLE OF AN UNPOPULAR WAR.

Are you TRYING

I think it’s hilarious that you use Rolling Stone as your authority on what “historians” think. It speaks volumes about your credibility.

After 9/11 our greatest enemy was recognized as being radical Sunni Islam. Most of the 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia and were adherents to the violent and intolerant Wahhabiism teachings. Saudi Arabia has been actively involved in exporting this ideology around the world using oil money generated within that state.

This created a serious problem. We could not turn on our Saudi “friends” and there was not an easy way to attack the widely disbursed Sunni radicals. A creative response was needed.

Much of foreign policy is built on the time-tested principles of “divide and conquer” and “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” To turn these principles into strategies, it was necessary to find a group, which was a natural enemy of the Sunni radicals. The obvious choice for this is the moderate Shiites who have their spiritual center in Iraq. An added reason for supporting these moderates is that they are not in line with the radical Shiites who now control the government of Iran. The installation of a moderate Shiite regime in Iraq would have the double benefit of becoming a thorn in the sides of both Iran and Saudi Arabia,

Of course, the best way to help the moderate Shiites was to take out their nemesis, Saddam Hussein, who had for many years stood as the bulwark against the hated forces of Shia. He had ruthlessly persecuted the Shiites in Iraq and mounted a lengthy and bloody war against Iran. The Sunni Muslims could ignore the Shiites, many of whom lived in their midst, because Saddam was holding them at bay.

Saddam had at one time been a close ally of the US, which was instrumental in bringing him to power and supplied him with armaments. Why did he turn against us? Remember “Iran-Contra?” Saddam was incensed when he found out that we were secretly funding and arming Iran in their fight with us. It became clear to him that all along, it has been our policy to contain his power. Research this strange episode and you will find commentators mystified as to the reasons behind it. No one states the obvious. We wanted to help Iran but needed to keep it a secret. VP Bush was the mastermind and even then we were playing the Sunni/Shia division.

I am convinced that the real reason we invaded Iraq, eliminated the Baath regime and abandoned our bases in Saudi Arabia is that we wanted to strengthen the power of the moderate Shiites in the region. At this time both sides hate us but also need us as they fight each other. The Bush administration constantly boasts that the proof for the success of our policies is that there have not been any attacks on our soil. Al Quaeda and the radical Sunnis are now concentrating their fury on the newly invigorated Shiite regime taking shape in Iraq. If it all turns out as we hope, the Shiites will be a major counterforce against radical Sunnis and the radical Shiites in Iran.

The nice thing about this theory is that it challenges the accepted wisdom that Bush and his cohorts were naïve in trying to set up a democracy in Iraq. This could never have been our goal. We are leaving the country a mess, but the radical Sunnis now have their traditional enemies to occupy them instead of us.

Even if the civil war in Iraq drags on with more violence or we are asked to leave, we will still have accomplished our primary goal of striking a blow against our most bitter enemy, radical Sunni Islam, and turned their attention to those whom they hate more than us. Having Saudi Sunnis in a dominant position as they coddle and export the virulent versions of their faith has not been healthy for the world or the Mideast region.
Time will tell if this has been a wise policy. Involving ourselves in the Mideast can have unforeseen consequences. Consider the bitter harvest we have reaped as a result of our support for the Mujadeen in Afghanistan. The ones we built up for that struggle are the same ones who turned on us later. On the other hand, if we accept this theory as the true rationale for our involvement in Iraq, it provides a much more reasonable explanation as to why we went in. It is certainly more credible than the official line that we embarked on this mission with the quixotic rationale of installing democracy in Iraq. That idea never did make sense and in my view was a mere pretense for the true, Machiavellian purposes laid out above. Unfortunately, if this is what we did, our government can never openly express it. Instead, we are left to merely observe and appreciate or dread the outcomes.

Well no, that’s not interesting.
In fact it’s gotten pretty fkn boring over the past 9 months having you repeatedly point to such a shift in policy as though you haven’t yet figured out this most simple of examples in cause and effect.

The most important issue of our time has been Bush’s poor response to warnings about the 9-11 attacks before they took place. It happened on his watch not Clinton’s. Since the attacks he used the good will of the American people and misused it. He lied us into a war using 9-11 as an excuse. It is clear that Bush doesn’t have the respect of the American people because he started a war of choice that most Americans think is a mistake. The surge has failed and it failed due to his failed policy in Iraq.