Things Related and Not

 

It happens that a man can live a long time and do any number of appalling stupid things, like help facilitate a long, brutal, murderous war of choice and authorizing torture, and if he is capable of mustering a grin and fashioning statements that in hindsight seem ghoulish or hysterical depending on how you look at things (among the greatest hits, "I don't do quagmires", "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want to have", "Freedom is messy" and the convoluted mush that is the full "unknown unknowns" quote) and he will somehow receive surprising praise even in death,

He's still dead though, and the history he leaves behind him is still brutal. Some people will say that the Iraq invasion, and the way the justification was tied to 9/11, and the excuse made for appalling judgements of error and misrepresentations of fact were judgment calls by people who felt, after the enormity of 9/11, that they were doing the right thing. Others will say those choices were deliberate and, had there been no 9/11 to tie them to, would have still been made, if more slowly.

Unknown unknowns, right? 

Even after investigations and time, accountability is hard to come by. 

That's the frustrating thing, after the lives lost and damage done and still ongoing. And there was a lot of blame to go around.