It will be easy on this anniversary of 9/11 to celebrate the courage of the people we came to know from that terrible day as the “first responders”—the firefighters, police, security, EMS, and other emergency workers who walked into the holocaust and did their duty while all others around them fled.

Our obligation to their sacrifice requires more than the somber commemoration of these heroes. Duty requires an unflinching review of the nation’s intelligence failures that led up to 9/11 and the wisdom and efficacy of the strategic response that followed it—decisions that were often clouded by incompetence, arrogance, and mendacity.

A U.S.-led coalition overthrew the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which had harbored the Al Qaeda network that authored the 9/11 violence. Perhaps the entire U.S. response could have been deemed successful and justified had it stopped there. Sadly it did not.

President George W. Bush did not let this crisis go to waste, pressing a compliant Congress into delivering the demonstration war that he wanted in the Middle East. He believed taking Iraq from Saddam Hussein would be a cakewalk, an object lesson to other regional players that might be considering some form of harm to the United States or its interests. Bush ignored Colin Powell’s infamous “break it, you bought it” warning and the counsel of Vatican envoys who urged him to pursue alternatives to the suffering he planned to visit on Iraq. The invasion was sold on flimsy justifications that later proved erroneous or fabricated. The March 2003 cakewalk quickly mutated into a frustrating mire for the U.S. military.