The problem with Bush is that his daddy had a long friendship with the HOS royals which ultimately jeapordized American lives since the HOS paid off the Wahhabi radicals with oil profits.
When we went into Afghanistan in 2003 it wasn't misguided as much as made up plot to keep Americans happy that 'we' were doing something. It was a typical State Dept run program of agitprop. It's like getting your drink spilled down the front of your shirt when a big guy bumps into you. When he turns around, calls you an asshole, you punch the smaller guy standing next to him.
We felt we could put on 'a production' by putting on a light show in the desert. And from there squeeze other adjacent nations, not remembering the lesson of the Soviet Union before.
Again, the entire thing was a lie of misdirection to control the field of view.
Saudi Arabia was who hit us, not the Taliban. Saudi Arabia whom the HOS paid off elements within their own society. What was deserved was not even going to war at all necessarily. Instead, we should have gone straight into Saudi Arabia and seized their oil fields to pay for the smoking hole in NYC. If anyone had a problem with that, we should have immediately encouraged them to voice their concern so we would know whom to bomb next.
No debt, no war machine, no strange tangents like Iraq or Afghanistan. Immediate payment to victims and the rebuild project, and in addition, huge economic benefits not unlike the Marshall Plan but in reverse, to US. It items as direct beneficiaries which would put us into actual surplus as of today.