The buck stopped with Bush. Re the power of the purse, the time to ask for 20 new divisions was in the weeks after 9/11, when his poll ratings were in the 80's, and Congress would have denied him nothing. The "go shopping" thing made him look unserious and the "tax cut" thing made like look like he was engaged in business as usual, using wartime-related political capital to reward the GOP's fat cat backers. He came off looking simultaneously lightweight and hyper-partisan.
Standing up new divisions would have simultaneously given the nation the clear messages that business as usual was out of the question, and that the nation was at war, and sacrifices would be needed. It would also have given him the ability to blanket Afghanistan with troops to corner, trap and demolish the Taliban instead of playing whack-a-mole because of insufficient troop coverage before moving on to Iraq.
The theme that sticks out again and again is the way in which at every critical juncture, he made the wrong decision. The recurrent media theme is "Bush lied", which is flat-out wrong. My problem with Bush is that he was just a lousy decisionmaker. He asked the wrong questions, and made the wrong decisions every step of the way.
I can’t buy into such a sweeping condemnation of Bush as, “at every critical juncture, he made the wrong decision.”
Getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a great thing. He was a truly evil man, who consciously modeled himself (by his own telling) after Hitler, Stalin and Al Capone. His regime murdered their own citizens at a greater rate than occurred during the height of the sectarian violence after our invasion (2006-2007). He initiated one of the largest wars of the 20th century against Iran, and had plans to conquer the mid-East oil fields and make himself a superpower.
He was then the world’s largest State sponsor of terror, paying $25,000 (enough to fund a retirement for a Palestinian) to the family of any suicide bomber who would attack Israelis. He made Iraq the Grand Central Station of terrorist training. The Salman Pak facility south of Baghdad had the fuselages of all the main commercial jets in service to rehearse hijackings, and classrooms equipped with storage and handling facilities for chemical and biological weapons, as well as radioactive materials.
His intelligence services were actively focused on attacking the USA, being represented in the al Quaeda Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 5 January 2000 to 8 January 2000, where the 9-11 attack was coordinated. The John Doe #2 from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing has also been rumored to have been an Iraqi. Ramzi Yousef’s phone records showed him placing calls to the family of Terry McNichols wife prior to the bombing, and both Ramzi Yousef and Terry McNichols were in Cebu City in the Philippines three months before the bombing. The US Government separately publicized an operation they had uncovered, where Iraqi Intelligence was preparing to assassinate former President Bush Sr. So eliminating Saddam was a significant historical accomplishment, although no easy feat.
When you stand up an Army Division, you incur long term costs, which are scored over the entirety of the ten year Congressional budget window, and extend long beyond it. You must build and operate a base for them to live. You must budget to train, equip and maintain additional capacity to transport them when needed. You must budget for their retirement and lifetime medical and disability costs.
Army Divisions are hugely expensive long term investments, which take several years to stand up. To stand up twenty, would require huge expansions to the training base schoolhouses, to the industrial base to equip, and perhaps, a draft to man them, as you would conservatively need at least a half million new soldiers. It would triple the number of Divisions in the Active Army today. In other words, it is an entirely unrealistic possibility. Even calling up a few Divisions from the Army Reserve to Active duty would likely be too costly and difficult for us to do. That is the reality of it.
So if you want to analyze George Bush’s decisions, it is unfair to compare his options with unrealistic imaginary options. Congress would not have given him 20 divisions. In fact, although they authorized the use of military force, they explicitly denied any expansion of permanent force structure. The next President will be even more sharply restricted after Obama’s draw down, program cancellations, massive debt, and structural increases of permanent new costs for Obamacare, food stamps and such.