Despite the fact that you have your mind already made up and despite the fact that your question is demeaning not only to a Senator and a former President of our grand country, your question is disrespectful of people who do not agree with your perspective.
Since your mind is already made up, let me point out to you that General Patraeus himself acknowledged what the overwhelming majority of the country knows (including statements from our entire intelligence community, the Baker report, etc, etc): George W Bush and Dick Cheney have lowered our level of safety with their war in Iraq.
And to address the point about the balanced budget: The years under Bill Clinton, whatever you think of him as a person, included creation of 420 million new jobs and economic growth never before (or after) realized by our nation. Since then, the government has grown by about 4-fold, we have a staggeringly humungous debt and the value of our dollar is circling the bowl. We spend $200 million dollars per day in Iraq. That's about $6 billion per month. Six billion per month to get our courageous troups killed and maimed and lower our nation's security level.
Our utter failure in Iraq and complete lack of successful diplomacy spear-headed by the staggeringly incompetent Dr. Rice 'doesn't exactly project strength to nations that are hostile to the US' either.