Critics said the changes were evidence of floundering by an administration that had failed to plan for or acknowledge the difficult reality of occupying and rebuilding a hostile and devastated nation.
The war threw the already stalling process of Nato (and EU) eastwards enlargement into disarray, not just in Georgia but also in Ukraine, and left the Bush administration floundering for retaliatory options against Moscow.
Obama does none of these things, and that's a large reason his administration is floundering and, with it, America's economy.
The Bush administration was floundering before Sept. 11, and it still seems to have difficulty dealing with the nation's domestic problems.
Efforts to harmonize the activities of anti-trust agencies across borders floundered during the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush.
"[Islamic State] use of social media is unprecedented so [the Obama administration] is floundering around, flailing around trying to find an appropriate response," Alberto Fernandez, vice president of the non-profit media monitoring group Middle East Media Research Institute and former coordinator of the U.S. Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, told me.
While Mr. McDermott supports helping Pakistan with its floundering economy, he said the Bush administration had "been a little cavalier" about wiping away sanctions on Pakistan imposed after General Musharraf took power in a military coup in 1999.
But, for now, fending off Capitol Hill's protectionists is less important than shoring up support for the administration's domestic priorities, particularly its floundering budget.Mr Bush's domestic agenda is in tatters.
Meanwhile the military tribunals experiment started by the Bush administration and now continued, after some reforms, by the Obama administration, has floundered; to date the only two guilty verdicts won at trial were vacated by an appeals court, leaving a handful of plea deals in which defendants gave up their right to appeal in exchange for brief sentences.
