The mainstream media served as a rubber-stamp in 2003 for the US Invasion of Iraq. While some people, myself included who followed foreign affairs and Middle East politics felt that the invasion was going to open a can of worms we didn’t want to see exposed, the press and most politicians bought into the premise that Saddam Hussien was a major threat to the USA lock, stock and barrel.

The non-existent connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda was sold to the American public even though Saddam saw Osama Bin Laden and religious forces as a threat to his secular Ba’ath Party dictatorship. No nation wanted Saddam out of power more than Iran, who fought a bloody eight-year conflict with Iraq from 1980 to 1988 and as a Shi’a theocracy was hopeful the United States could destabilize the nation and allow Iranian religious allies to take power in Baghdad. Iran had already benefited directly from the NATO invasion of Afghanistan and the toppling of Taliban whose biggest regional enemies Iran and India had been arming the Northern Alliance rebel group that the United States befriended in the aftermath of 9/11.

We hear today about what a threat Iran posses to the United States and given the growing ties between Tehran and Moscow this argument can be made. However, no such analysis was done by those in media who were beating the war drums in 2003, treating a war of choice in Iraq as this generations World War II type calling. Bush Administration lies were bought wholesale, not only justification for the war but more importantly how the occupation and reconstruction would be conducted.

Politicians bought the false pretenses as well with almost all simply rubber-stamping the march to war including Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Florida’s own “fire breathing liberal” Congressman Robert Wexler who strongly argued for the war with his constituents in early 2003. Senator Bob Graham who had been one of only ten Democrats to support authorization for the original Gulf War in 1991 was strongly opposed to the Iraq War, articulating his position openly at the time. While Senator Graham’s position was out of the Florida mainstream in 2003, history has more than vindicated this responsible stand.

The fact that we today have an all volunteer army made the politicians and media types advocacy for war easier. Make no mistake about this because it is reality regardless of what anyone argues to the contrary.

Members of the media like Phil Donahue and Asheigh Banfield were ostracized by MSNBC and eventually dismissed. Hollywood actors and others that were anti-war activists found themselves on internet blacklists. Former President Jimmy Carter’s labeling of the Iraq War as “one of the greatest blunders in history” was ridiculed in the press, including among so-called liberals. Some of these liberals such as the New Republic’s Peter Beinhart were effective foil for the Bush/Cheney agenda. Beinhart strongly advocated the war though in time he turned against it. But with publications like the New Republic and the New York Times thanks largely to Judith Miller in the tank for military adventurism, little cover existed for politicians on the left who might want to oppose the war.

Fast forward to 2014. We have a Democratic President and a broken Iraq. Unlike 2003, when the case to intervene was largely manufactured a clear case exists for the United States to put boots on the ground and fight a war worth waging (I would state that personally for the record I am not an advocate at this time of US intervention in Iraq. From where I sit ISIS toppling the Maliki Government may not be the worst thing  for the US long-term but that is the subject for another time). Yet today, the media is decidedly different than it was in 2003. Skepticism is abound and the President’s every move is being scrutinized. The decision to war in 2003 is being re-litigated even by perceived conservatives like FOX’s Megyn Kelly and self-styled foreign policy experts like CNN’s Erin Burnett.  Simply put the media which enabled President Bush in 2003 is boxing in President Obama in 2014. While that might seem unfair, it is the media actually taking the job they were trained to do seriously.

President Obama’s foreign policy has been a meandering mess. Combine that with the residual war-weariness of seven plus years of irresponsible Bush Administration policies with regards to the Middle East, Central Asia and military conflict, and we have an American public that has become tired and skeptical and apprehensive about our political leadership and the willingness of elements of that leadership to talk about war irresponsibly as a remedy to any foreign policy matter.

This President’s apparent naivety when it comes to dealing with certain foreign conflicts has created a situation where the United States is always reacting rather than leading in the world’s biggest hot spots. That is a bad thing from my perspective but I have come to understand the President is perhaps simply adopting the views of  those who voted for him, liberal Democrats who have determined as an over-reaction to the Bush years that the United States causes most of the world’s problems and that we have no business exerting ourselves abroad. This is not a completely unreasonable position in some cases, but in others like the mishandling of Russia it could prove fatal to American interests and our economic well-being.

While I firmly believe American global leadership requires policies and attitudes different than this President has demonstrated, I understand fully that what happened between 2003 and 2007  have damaged the appetite of public in the US for foreign interventions. It is in our national and economic security interests to confront radical Islam and more importantly to challenge Russia and China’s largely uncontested imperialist march. But the American people, I recognize are no longer interested in this sort of thing and the media’s tough questions this week are serving the public and the President well.

Kudos to the media for a job well done and perhaps a revival of what seemed to be the dying standards American journalism is on the way.