I agree with all of this—but also do think that there’s a real aspect here about some of the ideas lying around embedded existing policy constraints that were true both before and after the policy window changed. For example, Saudi Arabia was objectively a far better target for a 9/11-triggered casus belli than Iraq (15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, as was bin Laden himself!), but no one had a proposal to invade Saudi Arabia on the shelf because in a pre-fracking United States, invading Saudi Arabia would essentially mean “shatter the US economy into a third Arab Oil Embargo.”
I agree with all of this—but also do think that there’s a real aspect here about some of the ideas lying around embedded existing policy constraints that were true both before and after the policy window changed. For example, Saudi Arabia was objectively a far better target for a 9/11-triggered casus belli than Iraq (15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, as was bin Laden himself!), but no one had a proposal to invade Saudi Arabia on the shelf because in a pre-fracking United States, invading Saudi Arabia would essentially mean “shatter the US economy into a third Arab Oil Embargo.”