Well, the reason to bypass Győr was seen as sound by some, because it didn't significantly hinder communications with the Vienna besiegers and allowed the Ottoman army to invest Vienna more rapidly - which was important, considering how long it took to get a campaign going. Then once he was at Vienna, he didn't exactly sit around. He made sure to place his guns in the proper spots, and launched several attacks on Vienna defensive bastions, carrying on an energetic sapping and countersapping struggle with the Habsburg defenders underground as well. There's really very little there that was truly terribly handled. I mean, sometimes it all comes down to luck, sometimes it comes down to friction, and sometimes you may be good, but the other guy is just better. 
I mean, it was a pretty terrible loss, and it did have a pretty tremendous impact on the Ottomans' position in Europe, but the vezir didn't make any astoundingly bad moves to get there. He restarts the old war with the Habsburgs because Thököly offers him an opening, he builds a nice army, gets to Vienna, conducts a more or less conventional siege, then BAM here comes the King of friggin Poland-Lithuania who's supposed to be tied up in the Baltic right now with thirty thousand ish cavalry, then BAM he moves faster than anybody thought he would, compounded by a Tatar failure to hinder the Polish-Lithuanian army whatsoever, then BAM the Holy League troops hit the Turkish besieging army in a field battle that they launch at the same time as the Ottoman assault on the last Viennese bastion. I mean, seriously.
The point in mentioning the Tatars was that they were supposed to be the ones retarding the Polish-Lithuanian advance. Being a primarily cavalry force, they'd be good at that sort of thing, dontcha know.
Also, I think you may have the wrong guy for losing the Ukraine. Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa was one of the commanders in the victorious Ukrainian war, in the early 1670s. He played a role in the conquest of Kamianets and in managing Turkish aid to Petro Doroshenko's cossacks. In so doing, he actually ran up against Sobieski and fought him to at best a draw for the Poles - not a small achievement, in my opinion. When the Ottoman position in the Ukraine collapsed, it wasn't due to anything he did, really - it was Doroshenko, who had this unfortunate habit of meddling in Muscovy's sphere of influence, so the Muscovites finally got pissed enough to send an army to beat the crap out of his cossacks. Which they did.
I mean, I see what you're saying, the guy was clearly not an Alexander or a Napoleon or even a Sobieski, but he wasn't terrible either - otherwise he'd never have gotten to be a vezir. (Considering his teetotalism during a time when the reigning grand vezir, Fazıl Ahmed Paşa, was a notorious drunkard along with everybody else at court, I'm kind of surprised he managed to make enough friends to move up the ladder!) Maybe he just gets more grief because he was in charge when a disaster happened, whether he could've done anything about it or not. Like Herakleios and the Caliphal invasions. Or Darius III against Alexander the Great. Competent - hell, Herakleios was friggin genial - guys, but the odds were stacked against them, and in many ways out of their control.
I guess what I'm saying is, there's probably better targets for bile as "terribad generals" than Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa. Like Yeğen Osman Paşa. We need more people hating on Yeğen Osman!
I mean, it was a pretty terrible loss, and it did have a pretty tremendous impact on the Ottomans' position in Europe, but the vezir didn't make any astoundingly bad moves to get there. He restarts the old war with the Habsburgs because Thököly offers him an opening, he builds a nice army, gets to Vienna, conducts a more or less conventional siege, then BAM here comes the King of friggin Poland-Lithuania who's supposed to be tied up in the Baltic right now with thirty thousand ish cavalry, then BAM he moves faster than anybody thought he would, compounded by a Tatar failure to hinder the Polish-Lithuanian army whatsoever, then BAM the Holy League troops hit the Turkish besieging army in a field battle that they launch at the same time as the Ottoman assault on the last Viennese bastion. I mean, seriously.The point in mentioning the Tatars was that they were supposed to be the ones retarding the Polish-Lithuanian advance. Being a primarily cavalry force, they'd be good at that sort of thing, dontcha know.
Also, I think you may have the wrong guy for losing the Ukraine. Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa was one of the commanders in the victorious Ukrainian war, in the early 1670s. He played a role in the conquest of Kamianets and in managing Turkish aid to Petro Doroshenko's cossacks. In so doing, he actually ran up against Sobieski and fought him to at best a draw for the Poles - not a small achievement, in my opinion. When the Ottoman position in the Ukraine collapsed, it wasn't due to anything he did, really - it was Doroshenko, who had this unfortunate habit of meddling in Muscovy's sphere of influence, so the Muscovites finally got pissed enough to send an army to beat the crap out of his cossacks. Which they did.
I mean, I see what you're saying, the guy was clearly not an Alexander or a Napoleon or even a Sobieski, but he wasn't terrible either - otherwise he'd never have gotten to be a vezir. (Considering his teetotalism during a time when the reigning grand vezir, Fazıl Ahmed Paşa, was a notorious drunkard along with everybody else at court, I'm kind of surprised he managed to make enough friends to move up the ladder!) Maybe he just gets more grief because he was in charge when a disaster happened, whether he could've done anything about it or not. Like Herakleios and the Caliphal invasions. Or Darius III against Alexander the Great. Competent - hell, Herakleios was friggin genial - guys, but the odds were stacked against them, and in many ways out of their control.
I guess what I'm saying is, there's probably better targets for bile as "terribad generals" than Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa. Like Yeğen Osman Paşa. We need more people hating on Yeğen Osman!
