In my experience, politicians in particular, and governments in general, do not take responsibilities for their failures well. Far easier to blame the effects of those failures on some third party.

This is why most counterinsurgency efforts are such long, drawnout affairs. The effort is usually focused on defeating the illegal element of the populace that is acting out, as opposed to fixing the failures of governance that led to the illegal activities in the first place.

The book "1776" is a great case study in this phenomena. The King of England had so many opporutinities to offramp the growing insurgency in America, but could not get past the fact that he was in the right (legally, and logically), and recognize the much more emotional, subjective factors of poor governance that typically give rise to insurgency.