For Fox3:
His is very correct in re stewardship. The wars begun were with the political aim of toppling two regimes: Taliban and Saddam. That was completed. The civil wars over which the US presided were not begun by the US, but rather by local factions who chose that path to try and grab what power they could when the previous power structure fell.
That wasn't a required course of action. It was elective. It was not dependent upon US will or influence, but rather in spite of it.
Regarding an interesting point Abrams makes (I don't much care for him, but this touches on something I used to deal with on a daily basis).
A very well-placed Arab diplomat later told us that the strike had left Assad deeply worried as to what was coming next. He had turned Syria into the main transit route for jihadis going to Iraq to kill American soldiers. From Libya or Indonesia, Pakistan or Egypt, they would fly to Damascus International Airport and be shepherded into Iraq. Assad was afraid that on the heels of the Israeli strike would come American action to punish him for all this involvement. But just weeks later, Assad received his invitation to send a Syrian delegation to that big international confab of Condi’s, the Annapolis Conference, and according to the Arab envoy, Assad relaxed immediately; he knew he would be OK. I had not wanted Syria invited to Annapolis because of its involvement in killing Americans in Iraq, but Condi had wanted complete Arab representation as a sign that comprehensive peace might be possible. It was only years later that I learned that Assad had instead interpreted the invitation just as I had: as a sign that the United States would not seriously threaten or punish him for what Syria was doing in Iraq.
General John Abizaid once responded to criticism of foreign fighters infiltrating into Iraq from Syria and Saudi by pointing to our own southern border, and the problems there in peacetime. The infiltrators were using low tech smuggling methods there were centuries old in that region.
That Assad turned a blind eye to being the enabler of that movement strikes me as one reason "W" may have chosen to turn a blind eye on the Israeli move.
My guess is that "W" set up all of the other smoke screens and noise to drive Ohlmert into that decision, more or less backing him into a corner so that he had to act as he did.