NO. NEXT QUESTION? Did it ever occur to the Times — or Obama, for that matter — that the president’s efforts to ‘end’ Bush’s wars are precisely what ended up extending them?”

When Obama took office he inherited a pacified Iraq, where the terrorists had been defeated both militarily and ideologically.  Militarily, thanks to Bush’s surge, coupled with the Sunni Awakening, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI, now the Islamic State) was driven from the strongholds it had established in Anbar and other Iraqi provinces. It controlled no major territory, and its top leader — Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — had been killed by US Special Operations forces.

Ideologically, the terrorists had suffered a popular rejection. Iraq was supposed to be a place where al-Qaeda rallied the Sunni masses to drive America out, but instead, the Sunnis joined with Americans to drive al-Qaeda out — a massive ideological defeat.

Obama took that inheritance and squandered it – withdrawing all US forces from Iraq; taking our boot off of the terrorists’ necks; allowing them to regroup and establish a safe haven in Syria; and then when they prepared their offensive back into Iraq, doing nothing while dismissing them as the “JV squad.”

As Gen. Jack Keane pointed out on Fox News this morning, in Iraq “Bush won the war. Obama lost the peace.”

Analysis: True.