You have summed it up pretty well. The democrats only “strategy” was to withdraw our troops. Nothing to bolster what was achieved over there with regards to getting the crazies out of power, and the jihad monkeys on the run. What we have now is an unstable country with Shia domination on one side under the heavy influence of the iranians, and the ISIS psychos on the other side.
That is a summation of NeoCon talking points designed to re-write the history of Iraq.
We went into Iraq on a NeoCon lie and the legal basis for invading and being in Iraq was the UN Mandate, which was not an open ended basis.
We would waltz in, set Chalabi up on the throne, and be out in 2 years max, probably shorter. And the oil revenue would pay for it all. We disbanded the military and police, who would become the combatants and insurgents.
Chalabi was rejected so Bush and the NeoCons started fishing around for someone else, who we would set up. Maliki was the man.
That had this phony election that the Sunnis boycotted, so you could say the Iraq civil war started on election day.
So Bush and the NeoCons decided to take part in the civil war on the side of the Shia, but we had to beef up our military, which was called the Surge.
The reason we did this was because in 2006 it became evident that there would be no more extensions to the UN Mandate. Without the mandate, Bush would have had to begin the orderly withdrawal of troops in 2007. That would have been utter defeat for Bush and left Iraq in a broken chaos. No matter how bad it was in Iraq, Iraq was unwilling to negotiate a legal agreement for the US to stay.
So Bush and Cheney rolled the dice. Their last shot would be the surge. A huge increase in troop levels which Patreaus would command to defeat the Sunnis, while General Allen passed out huge sums on money to Sunni leaders to get them to switch sides and support the Shia govt. And to be accurate, Sunnis were given positions of power in the govt and military. Unfortunately, they would eventually be purged.
The Surge was never the great success it was made out to be, but it did buy some time. They killed a lot of Sunnis and won a lot of battles, but many of the Sunnis fled to Syria. And the US military bombed these Sunnis in Syria, as part of the surge. And you need to realize it was these sunnis from Iraq in Syria that would be the beginning of the unrest in Syria. And, it would be Maliki's complete purge of the Sunnis in Iraq, that led to the wide support of ISIS in Iraq by the Iraqi sunnis.
dfwgator gave you a link and you should read that thoroughly. There was a great deal of vagueness In Bush's SOFA as to what degree immunity would be granted American troops and contractors. There was a great deal vagueness and opinion as to what the troop levels would be in the event a second SOFA could be negotiated. And even though, Bush's SOFA was approved by parliament, many Iraqis approved that SOFA only because that was the quickest way to get the US troops out of Iraq and they never had any intention negotiating or approving another SOFA for a residual force beyond the 2011 pullout.
Which brings you to another NeoCon talking point. In this talking point the NeoCons acknowledge that because of the events in Iraq, it was not likely Obama could have gotten the Iraqi parliament to approve a second SOFA. But, the NeoCons say that Maliki would have been willing to sign an Executive SOFA with Obama and Obama should have signed that and used it as the basis for leaving troops in Iraq. However, since Bush's SOFA did have approval from parliament, a replacement Obama SOFA without the same approval would have been worthless.
If we go back to those days, the NeoCons said the democratization of Iraq would be a beacon of light to the poor and oppressed throughout the mideast. They would all be clamoring for democracy. But that is not what happened.
We democratized the Palestinians which brought Hamas to power. We destabilized Iraq which has destabilized the entire region. And it ain't anywhere near being over.