RE IRAQ WAR A REPUBLICAN WAR

"We will never know how politics would have been different in the Middle East if the Bush Administration had not invaded Iraq. The evidence from Egypt and Syria suggests that the authoritarian regimes that have ruled much of the region for decades were bound to come under threat, and that some territories were likely to fall into chaos.  We surely, however, accelerated that process, and now it is under control.  The Germans might well have felt the same way about the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, which they made possible by defeating the Russian Army so thoroughly during the First World War.  Not until Hitler, however, did they make an all-out effort to undo that result, and the consequences turned out to be disastrous for Germany.  Having helped set the disintegration of the Middle East in motion, we cannot arrest, much less reverse it.  It will play itself out by its own rules." DK

Parenthetically, one could speculate on what might have been:
"We will never know how politics would have been different in the Middle East if the Bush Administration had not invaded Iraq." DK.   Let's grant the likelihood of his suggestion. 

While I would admit that the tendency in American politics to blame one party is strong, I believe that some might want to take a closer look at the history of either party here, and how each of them has blundered, both militarily and ideologically, most everywhere force has been used in American history, by either party in the lead.

Vietnam was tagged with the moniker a Democrats' war.

The reasoning, late entry, and ideological approach, to WWI, under Hoover, then Wilson; the reasoning, flawed ideology, and military denouement, of WWII under Roosevelt, and after his death when political decision making essentially stopped apparently, Eisenhower's military role; the whole Korean War, are, to me, classic examples.

' (Eisenhower:) "From a tactical point of view," he said, "it is highly inadvisable for the American Army to take Berlin and I hope political influence won't cause me to take the city. It has no tactical or strategic value and would place upon the American forces the burden of caring for thousands and thousands of Germans, displaced persons and Allied prisoners of war." Patton was dismayed. "Ike, I don't see how you figure that out," he said. "We had better take Berlin, and quick-- and on to the Oder!" '

'...(Patton) again urged Eisenhower to take Berlin. It could be done, argued Patton, in forty-eight hours. "Well, who would want it?" Eisenhower asked. Patton paused, then put both hands on Eisenhower's shoulders and said "I think history will answer that question for you." ' Toland, The Last 100 Days, p 371.

There will be people out there, who will say things like  'can't betray an ally, we needed the Soviets, they deserved Eastern Europe for their war effort, we couldn't do it, we needed them for Japan,' various other things.

They may not even be aware that the Soviets, by the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact, 1941, actually made Pearl Harbor possible.

Of course, if your intent was, and had remained, as was Roosevelt's and Morgenthau's, (cf eg Beschloss, The Comquerors) to reduce Germany, more or less forever, to bare subsistence farming, then Eisenhower, their faithful agent in this regard, would have been right about Berlin.  See Kennan, Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin, "Russia and the West as Allies", especially the concept of unconditional surrender.

Of course, had Roosevelt's and Morgenthau's plan been completely carried out, one would very soon then have had Stalin's hot Orthodox Civilization breath, breathing down, not only on Eastern Europe, but  on the very heart of Western Europe as well, taking over without resistance this subsistence farm land from its German peasants, a civilizational coup greater even than that of the Ottoman Sultan, with the help of France up to 1748 (and facilitated before WWI, and by its approach to denouement in WWII, by the same disgruntled, rogue Western Power, France).