I would add that the reason we struggled in Iraq for so many years was constant SUBVERSION BY THE LEFT. The Left not only weakened our resolve at home, but they emboldened the enemy.
And of course Obama's election was the coup that destroyed our hard-won victory.
I think that was actually a secondary factor. The primary factor was the complete political and cultural dysfunction of the place -- which made it impossible to govern in any way that we as Americans would recognize as normal or legitimate.
Go back and read the transcripts of the interviews Dick Cheney was doing in the early 1990s when he was explaining why the U.S. didn't topple Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime in the first Gulf War. His assessment back then was spot-on ... which is what makes his role in the Bush administration particularly disgraceful. Frankly, the guy should be given the same place in the ash heap of history as an @sshole like Robert McNamara -- because he knew damn well what the U.S. was getting into in 2003 but obviously didn't give a sh!t.