Certainly one of the biggest government planning disasters of the last decade was the so-called War on Terror. Given the tragedy of 9/11, a government response was certainly called for, but the way it was handled by the Bush administration was poorly conceived from the very beginning.

Start with name: “war on terror.” Instead of treating the terrorists as criminals, we treated them as enemy soldiers, which carries with it the assumption that they work for another country. That was completely untrue, which led to all sorts of mistaken policies.

Then there was the attempt to capture Bin Laden, who supposedly planned the 9/11 attacks. While John Kerry claims that the Bush administration missed its opportunity to catch or kill him, not everyone is convinced. Still, it is clear that the administration completely lost interest in Bin Laden in its eagerness to attack Iraq.

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