But when someone flies airliners into your office buildings, you have to treat it as an attack on your sovereignty and your national honor. These people didn't do this (9/11) to influence our policy, or for some military or economic objective, they did it to humiliate and insult us, to demonstrate their moral and spiritual superiority to us. Any other response than the one we chose, total war, would have been perceived as cowardice and weakness. I may have not seen it at the time, but it is becoming increasingly clear to me now. Except for the Iraq fiasco, Dubya handled the response to 9/11 correctly.

From the tribal perspective of our enemies. We did the right thing by demanding the Taliban give up Al-Quaeda, and when they didn't, we took the Taliban's country away from them. Honor, or if you prefer, "face", was saved. But we should have left it in the hands of the Northern Alliance warlords and gotten out. Of course, the Bush/Cheney invasion of Iraq was all about geopolitical, economic and strategic goals. It had nothing to do with 9/11, and it is its consequences we are dealing with right now.

We are not blameless in the Middle East. Neither are our European predecessors. It is true, many of our problems there can be traced back to what Muslims see as infidel or "Crusader" interference in their affairs. There is much truth to this, but we simply cannot allow them to hurt us today for crimes committed by the English, French and Russians in the 19th century, or by the CIA in the the 1950s and 60s. If local thugs exploit those legitimate grievances as an excuse to carry out their own murderous agendas and local feuds and genocides, it is not our problem. When they start hijacking our planes, it becomes our problem.

When the Elder Bush invaded Iraq in the 90s in response to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait he finessed it all just right. He got local support, Euro buy-in, made clear it was about Kuwait and control of the Straits of Hormuz (where we had legitimate interests), and he got out as soon as the announced mission was completed. There were no repercussions about this, except that Bin Ladin was upset about our bases in Saudi, which was purely a religious issue. He hated the Russians, too, remember?

The Iraq invasion of the 21st century was something else again, it got us involved in local politics, religious squabbles, nation-building, a complete reorganization of the Iraqi state and political system, and got us bogged down in a long and bloody occupation and a rivalry with the Iranians. It was a colossal fuckup, it started dominoes tumbling that still haven't fully played out, and we are still trying to disentangle ourselves from it all. Unlike the Elder Bush, we just didn't go in and discipline a thug, we went in and took over in a place where we din't have a clue what was going on and didn't even have the resources to stop looters, and then we couldn't pull out without leaving a vacuum that would lead to total chaos. That vacuum still exists, and its what is sucking Obama down as well. The Neocons want us to stay they forever, but the Iraqis ordered us out, remember? They wanted the right to arrest our troops at their convenience. Short of continuing an occupation under their terms indefinitely, we had no choice but to leave.

Obama's mistake was not getting out totally and completely. We did our part, installed a new government, gave it democratic institutions, and spent a lot of money in reconstruction, arms and training to let them handle their own security. That fulfilled our you-break-it-you-buy-it obligation. THEY blew it by punishing the Sunnis and giving ISIS an excuse to invade, and then failing to stop them even with their advantages in men and equipment.

Of course, we had to stay in because of the threatened genocide by ISIS, and because the Kurds were brave and loyal allies we had abandoned once before to our eternal disgrace and who deserved our help. Obama got sucked in by that vacuum I talked about earlier. Whether or not he can guide us out of this mess is anyone's guess. If anyone can, I think it is him, he's smart and he's got balls, and he seems to think he can do this by threading a path between total war and just bugging out and not looking back. I'm not sure he can pull it off, but I'm absolutely sure his critics on the Right wouldn't be able to.

Obama isn't responsible for this morass any more than Lincoln was responsible for the Civil War. He inherited a lot of history. The ultimate causes and mistakes are partially his, but also go back to his predecessors and to post-WWI European actions in the region, and even Muslim religious politics of the 6th century. But like Lincoln, he will be judged by whether he can pull it off or not.

I can offer no guarantees, but I think he will. I'm glad he's there.