We were good at it, and now others are playing it. The scum.
Consider it blowback. If the rule is "the last person to touch it is 100% responsible for it," which was damned convenient from 2001-2008, then the rule gets less and less palatable after 1/20/2009. I mean, take the withdrawal of forces from Iraq. It was entirely Bush II's doing. He negotiated--well, his people negotiated--the agreement and he signed it. It was convenient for Obama to try to negotiate some continuing troop presence, but when he failed to push hard enough or bargain appropriately it was a good "promise kept." It was a proud moment to get the last US troops out of Iraq, and one that Obama took credit for.
Then, years later, there were complaints this had happened. Suddenly the proud claim vanished and around the edges it was "Bush's fault for signing that status of forces agreement." Now you hear both claims--people who want to give Obama credit for complying with the agreement and people who want to spare Obama any responsibility for complying with the agreement. You posture enough and you have to be Houdini to get out of the cramped space.
Since this is spill-over from Syria (which was in part spill-over from N. Africa), plus tensions because al-Maliki was demoted in importance in the "pivot to Asia" and claims that exiting Iraq was a political triumph, that particular blame-game is suddenly highly unpopular now that N. Africa, Syria, and neglecting Iraq turned out to be problematic.
But it was always a political game because accuracy and reality tends to be not quite so convenient, and it's a bad game when it's played for political game with people and countries as game pieces. It doesn't matter who plays it. Still, it was one we liked ... for a while.
Tunisia was lucky. Or, rather, had a fairly wise interim government. Tribalism started to tear the country apart, and the interim government bailed from the whole tribal-recrimination/favoritism game. It tried not to play favorites, to get past coast/inland, conservative/liberal, and tribal divisions to address perceived grievances and wrongs in an fair-minded if not perfect way. So it avoided the fate of Lebanon, Syria, Libya, and even Egypt which was less riven by differences than the media would have you believe. (In fact, in many ways, Tamarrod and many "seculars" in Egypt played the same game. Maximize blame and differences in order to divide society, solidify your own support, and thereby get power--even when it hurts the country instead of fostering it's prosperity. That's how a society dies, not how it thrives.)
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