I do find it strange that one of the only wise things Bush did was to declare victory for which he was mercilessly criticized...
...not sure I understand what you are saying here
seems rather obvious to me.
you fight a war.. you say you won and you get out... we should have said we toppled saddam's government and achieved our objectives.... had we not interfered AFTER we toppled the government its very probable that the Sunnis would have retained power and we would not have strengthened our enemies as we ended up doing... Iran's position in the region was strengthened with the Shiites taking over and the sunnis eventually got tired of it and formed Isis...
Bush should have declared victory far sooner and we should have gotten everybody out... we could have come out looking like winners, saved a ton of money, and lives.. and its hard to imagine things could have gone much worse..
Of course, we should never have gone in in the first place but back then that was a very unpopular stance.. I can still remember CNN telling us that once we made the decision to go in to protest was unpatriotic...and I can remember for years afterwards turning up for the protests and it was a few dozen people!! Now EVERYBODY suddenly claims they were against it of course....