Four years ago, this nation pursued a war like no other

This is the fourth anniversary of President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, a pre-emptive war that was out of character for the United States. Equally out of character has been the mismanagement of the invasion and its aftermath. Failure to secure the peace has resulted in a war that has dragged on for longer than the United States was involved in combat during World War II.
Had the war gone as the president envisioned it, this would be a day of celebration. As we noted with skepticism on this date four years ago, in Bush's vision, "the United States will win quickly and without massive U.S. or allied casualties. We will be welcomed by the people of Iraq as liberators. Democracy will replace the dictatorship in Baghdad and the world community will join hands to rebuild Iraq."
Unfortunately for all concerned, the result has been less a product of the administration's wishful thinking and more a product of the dynamic we described in an editorial 10 days earlier: "The Sunni Arabs of Baghdad and northern Iraq, the Shiite Arab majority in the capital and the south and the Kurds in the far north hold different views of what a post-Saddam Iraq should be."
Problems of the present
Today, while the troop surge into Baghdad has resulted in a lull in tribal warfare, the prospects for peace seem no closer. The same administration that argued for the need to depose Saddam Hussein so as to deprive him of his weapons of mass destruction now talks about the role that Iran is playing as a provider of support for insurgents in Iraq. The United States essentially abandoned its role as an honest broker in peace talks between Palestinians and Israel. Radical Islamists have gained power in Palestinian territories and in Lebanon. Sunni dominated states such as Saudi Arabia are watching carefully to see what happens to their sectarian brothers in Iraq. Iraqi refugees, including much of the country's middle class, are flooding into neighboring countries.
The one clearly positive thing is that Saddam Hussein and his murderous sons are dead. But there is still no assurance that his dictatorship will be replaced by a stable democratic government.
President Bush's mistake was in not listening to those advisers in the military and in the diplomatic service who told him that the plan he was following was flawed, that the cost of invasion would be far higher in dollars and lives than was anticipated and that the United States was pursuing a military adventure that could tie U.S. troops to Iraq for decades.
Troop performance
America's fighting men and women -- active duty and reserves -- have done everything they have been asked to do and more. But they have been ill-served by a secretary of defense who three years into the war excused the lack of armored vehicles by saying "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish to have."
We are now seeing that four years after the war began, military hospitals are still not up to the task of providing the kind of treatment Americans expect every wounded veteran to receive. The bureaucracy has still not caught up with the need to remove as much ancillary stress as possible from the lives of wounded soldiers who need medical treatment in the short term and disability support in the long term.
We wish we could turn the clock back by four years and a day if there were even a remote chance that President Bush would decide to pursue a course other than invasion. And while we do not expect a sitting president to say as much, there have to be days that President Bush wishes he had never made the decision of March 19, 2003, that will define his presidency and establish his place in history.