Bush's Sin

William McGurn: Bush's Real Sin Was Winning in Iraq - WSJ.com

I believe this to be a pretty correct call. The highlight here:

"Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could
be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave," read the
editorial. "There could be reprisals against those who worked with
American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide." Even genocide. With no hint of irony, the Times nevertheless went on to conclude that it would be even worse if we stayed.

This
is Vietnam thinking. And the president never accepted it. That was why
his critics went ape when, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars,
he touched on the killing fields and exodus of boat people that
followed America's humiliating exit off an embassy rooftop. As the
Weekly Standard's Matthew Continetti noted, Mr. Bush had appropriated
one of their most cherished analogies -- only he drew very different
lessons from it.

Mr. Bush's success in Iraq is equally infuriating, because it showed
he was right and they wrong. Many in Washington have not yet admitted
that, even to themselves. Mr. Obama has. We know he has because he has
elected to keep Mr. Bush's secretary of defense -- not something you do
with a failure.

I suspect that BO plans to throw Gates under the bus at the first sign of trouble, but if Iraq was where BO and the Democrats had predicted it would be, the Bush SecDef would be OUT, and there would be "immediate withdrawl". If BO, Reid, Hillary, Biden, etc were Republicans rather than Democrats, being as wrong as they were about the surge would have been the end of their electability to anything higher than their posititions at the time they took the "war is lost", "surge will fail" positions--if that. When you are a Republican and take solid positions that turn out that wrong -- or even less wrong than that, you are a pariah (witness Bush).