IMO "the trade" is used by a lot of folks as justification for why every other thing Krivsky does is stupid and why they themselves are so brilliant. It constantly amazes me that people underestimate the difficulty of being the general manager of a business with an overall budget approaching 100 million dollars and with hundreds of employees. Now, it's perfectly possible that Krivsky might end up being a bad GM, the jury is still out on that IMO, but to act like this can be judged definitively from the outside in a period of roughly 15 months is a little dubious IMO, considering the wide range of responsibilities that major league GM's have in their job descriptions.
I do think it's perfectly natural to have some doubts at this point, Krivsky has made some questionable moves (and some really good ones), and the Reds are playing very poorly right now, but IMO anybody who thinks that Krivsky should have built the Reds into a winner by now is severely underestimating the size and difficulty of the project.