I'm not going to go too far to defend W, but I dont think he ever intended to be the war monger that he ended up being. It's funny, we harass Trump for not believing the intelligence agencies, but thats exactly what W did...believed the intelligence agencies regarding WMD's....I'm far from an expert, though, so I'm probably missing something.
My whole point was IF 9/11 didnt happen, perhaps...
But it did.
And, I was old enough to remember W's campaign to become president, and the short pre-9/11 time he had as president.
No, there is very strong internal evidence that the Bush administration planned to push regime change in Iraq even before 9/11 happened. In fact, 9/11 was a convenient excuse, but it actually slowed down their time frame as they had to commit resources to Afghanistan first, and then later backtracked to their original Iraq plans.
He also pushed an awful tax cut for rich people that killed the budget right when we were finally getting budget surpluses. He passed "Medicare Part D" which was just an insanely expensive give-away to pharmaceutical companies. He completely botched Katrina in part because he nominated incompetent fools to important positions, and in part because he just didn't seem to take it seriously enough. And he presided over the government for the full 7 years before the housing market and then the economy collapsed, having done nothing to prevent them.
And that's before you get into invading Afghanistan, invading Iraq, secret detentions, torture, awful expectations going into the wars and poor management of them, basically creating Isis, etc.
He was a really bad president.
True, he did some things for Africa and I think he's honestly a nice-hearted guy. But he's a nice-hearted guy completely committed to the governing philosophies of wealthy White warmongerers. So even if he doesn't "feel" evil, he carries out plans whose effects are evil, and he did that from the beginning of his presidency to the end.