No, the public hostility wasn't down to Blair not having enough huge victorious battles of the lack of a British surge. It was that we went in at all without Security Council blessing and without finding WMDs.
I know what Blackwatch did very well and I expected this response as not politically owning the turn around is something that is really very hard to quantify, but I will give it a shot.
I never said the British are angry at their armed forces, but I stand by my point that there is a huge difference in how Bush is seen and interviewed about the war in the US and from what I have seen of Blair interviews and I do think a great deal of it comes down to Blair frankly not being able to politically own when things went right against almost all media and public expectations.
Bush interviews on Iraq amount to mistakes were made early on, but we set things right then the question comes up what to do now and his response is basically mistakes were made again and we are setting them right oh and here is how we might tweek what we are doing some.
With Blair for him it's seemingly forever stuck in no UN support and botched and oversold war interviews where he can't seem to properly pivot the line of discussion beyond a time frame where almost everything that could he could be wrong about and could going wrong seemed to be.
Would it be different if British troops and Iraqi troops and locals were working hand in hand to clear out Basra in 2007/2008? I can't be certain as America and Britian are different, but I just know the American press even NPR which tends to be pretty liberal actually wants to hear what Bush has to say about say ISIS and his POV is given a level of respect in a way the British press certainly doesn't seem to for Blair.
Memories of U.S. troops and Iraqis decisively driving what was then the Islamic State of Iraq into the Iraq/Syria desert in the last two years of his Presidency I strongly suspect plays a big role in that.
If Bush day had a serious medical crisis and stepped down in mid or late 2006 I suspect he would be more or less in Blair's shoes today if he got better of being stuck talking to the press only about a period of misjudgments and mistakes and with no respect given to his views now on related matters.