I'd rather complain about the mistake made by the incumbent, rather than the actions taken by a President more than a decade ago due to intelligence reports, yes. Continuous complaints about Bush are grating.
I'm not sure about a solution, but at least I'm willing to admit as much. "We aren't the world's police!" makes for a great sign to hold during a grassroots rally, but it isn't sound or realistic policy. We are currently the most powerful nation in the world both economically and militarily. We have ties to other states that aren't so simply broken. We invaded Iraq justifiably, but in hindsight it was a poor decision. We, however, cannot change that.
It's hard to say Send the troops!, but that may be the only way to actually combat such a threat in the long-term. We can assassinate their leadership as much as we'd like, but as long as those militants have their mind set on their goals, they will just regroup and continue their jihad under another name in the near future.
Clearly, withdrawing from Iraq has led to an era of peace, prosperity, and freedom from extremist tyranny in the region. Is that what you're implying? If not, I'm not sure what you're trying to say, and if you are, then you're looking at the conflict through rose tinted glasses.
The NIE report prior to our invasion of Iraq in 2003 outlined a few key factors. Mainly, Saddam had the ability to produce a large amount of chemical/biological material in half a year, Iraq could produce nuclear weapons within a year if it acquired the correct ingredients, and Iraq was in violation of a number of U.N. resolutions with regard to NCB production.
Did you expect us to brush off an intelligence report and allow Saddam to continue? I'd like to ask you to sit back for a moment and imagine yourself in Bush's shoes. Not the ones that were thrown at him, but his actual shoes. If you're the leader of the United States of America, and your intelligence agencies come to you with a report stating that they are highly confident a dictatorship is pursuing WMDs, would you not listen? Would you trust the intelligence of Western Europe over your own agencies?