Nothing is easier than to second-guess other people's decisions, ignoring the inherent limitations of knowledge, the pressures of circumstances, and the dangers of alternative courses of action.

Americans in all parts of the political spectrum have made serious mistakes about Iraq.

Some have been the mistakes of honorable people -- indeed, mistakes to which honorable people may be more prone than others. Other people have acted with utter dishonor and dishonesty -- the most shameful recent example being the smearing of General David Petraeus as a liar before he had said a word.

Precisely because Congressional Democrats already knew that there had been progress after the troop surge in Iraq -- some of their own colleagues had been there and seen it -- they had to discredit General Petraeus, in order to prevent the American people from knowing it.

Democratic Congressman James Clyburn said it all in an unguarded moment when he admitted that an American victory in Iraq "would be a real big problem for us" in next year's elections.

That is why a general who is putting his life on the line every day in Iraq, and whose efforts are producing some success, has to be called a liar on nationwide television by United States Senators and a traitor in a New York Times ad.

What of the mistakes of the Bush administration?

The book "Mugged by Reality" by John Agresto, based on his experiences as a civilian advisor in Iraq, makes it painfully clear that the attempt to create a democracy in Iraq was the biggest failure of good intentions there and the key to much else that went wrong.

The idea was that democratic nations do not fight each other or sponsor terrorist campaigns against one another. Therefore, if we could create a democracy in Iraq, we would have made a historic contribution to world peace by planting the first democracy in the Arab Middle East.

Over time, the spread of that democracy in the region would successively deprive terrorist organizations of the bases and political support needed to wreak havoc in Western nations.

Perhaps the strongest support for this theory came from the actions of the terrorists themselves, who have poured men, money, and weapons into Iraq on a massive scale, and blown themselves up in suicide attacks, in order to prevent this project from succeeding. Continued...