What I find infuriating about the way Bush handled Iraq

The problem with the Bush philosophy regarding a conquered Iraq is that he wanted to believe that it would be possible to transform this little part of the Middle East into a democracy in a few years.

This was wrong and it led to unnecessary bloodshed and inevitably to the Obama disaster of total disengagement.  Leading to ISIS.

For some reason I believed that Bush was a realist and would see that it would take decades of American control and education.  Just as it took a long time to transform Japan and Germany, countries that were hundreds of years ahead of the Middle East in terms of cultural development.

Jerry Pournelle is a realist, describing how to settle the problem of ISIS ...

And their [ISIS] weakness is that unlike al Qaeda ISIS cannot fade into invisibility: you are not Caliph if you do not have territory in which to impose Islamic law, including slavery, beheadings, and cutting off hands. If you do not impose these things you are not, according to the Caliphate Muslims, a Muslim, and can and indeed must be corrected or deposed. So it goes.

Which means, just now, that a division of US regulars and all the warthogs, with some Marine air, and USAF anti-missile air superiority planes, could in a year destroy the Caliphate. We give North Iraq to the Kurds. Central Iraq to whomever we select among the factions. Syria – not clear, but possibly to the dictatorship, with what conditions we choose to impose. It doesn’t matter because it’s fantasy: Obama will do no such thing. But we could do it if we had a President.