My intelligent and well-informed interlocutor, BB, chided me for my "support" of the Bush administration.
Your sycophantic support of an administration that regards the constitution as "quaint" and which has done more to impinge upon the rights of man (to the aggrandizement of the ultra wealthy)is reprehensible.
I don't think that there is a sycophantic bone in my body, but this does raise a very good question: is the conventional wisdom regarding Bush's policies correct? Has his foreign policy in particular been the disaster that many commentators take for granted? My view is that it has been a rather mixed bag, and that the Bush Administration's biggest decision, the invasion of Iraq, was a very questionable decision. Contrary to what my readers might think, I never endorsed that decision. I have pointed out on more than one occasion that Bush at least had an Iraq policy, which is more than President Clinton or two successive Democratic presidential campaigns have had. But it is pretty clear in retrospect that the Bush Administration didn't know what it was doing. However, politics is more concerned with outcomes than inputs. One constant criticism of Bush is that he never changes his mind when things don't go as planned. That one is dead wrong.
Fareed Zakaria writes in Newsweek under the provocative title: "What Bush Got Right." Here is no sycophantic admirer of the President. But unlike most of Bush's critics, he has tried to adopt a balanced view.
Bush's basic conception of a "global War on Terror," to take but the most obvious example, has been poorly thought-through, badly implemented, and has produced many unintended costs that will linger for years if not decades. But blanket criticism of Bush misses an important reality. The administration that became the target of so much passion and anger—from Democrats, Republicans, independents, foreigners, Martians, everyone—is not quite the one in place today. The foreign policies that aroused the greatest anger and opposition were mostly pursued in Bush's first term: the invasion of Iraq, the rejection of treaties, diplomacy and multilateralism. In the past few years, many of these policies have been modified, abandoned or reversed. This has happened without acknowledgment—which is partly what drives critics crazy—and it's often been done surreptitiously. It doesn't reflect a change of heart so much as an admission of failure; the old way simply wasn't working. But for whatever reasons and through whichever path, the foreign policies in place now are more sensible, moderate and mainstream. In many cases the next president should follow rather than reverse them.
Now I think, sycophant that I am, that Zakaria exaggerates the sins of Bush's first term. And I am very skeptical that Bush's more flexible policies towards North Korea and Palestine will achieve anything worthwhile. But it is simply false that the Administration has been inflexible in its policies. And I think Zakaria is right about one big thing: the next President will end up continuing a lot of Bush's policies. The reason is simply that there are only so many policy options available on many of these fronts, and Bush is has managed to find the least bad policy in most cases.
A deeper thinker than Zakaria, Edward Luttwak, comes to much the same conclusion in his piece in the British Prospect. Luttwak compares Bush to Harry Truman: despised as a catastrophic failure when he left office, but recognized as a success today. Like Zakaria, Luttwak is no sycophant.
For Bush to be recognised as a great president in the Truman mould, the Iraq war too must become half forgotten. The swift removal of the murderous Saddam Hussein was followed by years of expensive violence instead of the instant democracy that had been promised. To confuse the imam-ridden Iraqis with Danes or Norwegians under German occupation, ready to return to democracy as soon as they were liberated, was not a forgivable error: before invading a country, a US president is supposed to know if it is in the middle east or Scandinavia.
That is a serious criticism of Bush's invasion, but I think it is largely beside the point. Iraq became a near disaster not because the Iraqis weren't Scandinavians, but because the forces hostile to the United States were much more inventive, much more capable of organized resistance, and much better supported from outside, than anyone guessed. Resistance from various factions in Iraq should have been expected and Bush should have planned better for it. The insurgency that did emerge was a genuine and horrific surprise. All the more impressive, then, is the fact that Bush defeated it.
But Luttwak points to a much more important fact: that the strategic situation the world over has shifted against our enemies.
Until 9/11, Islamic militants, including violent jihadists of every sort, from al Qaeda to purely local outfits, enjoyed much public support—either overt or tacit—across most of the Muslim world. From Morocco to Indonesia, governments appeased militants at home while encouraging them to focus their violent activities abroad...
All this came to an abrupt end after 9/11. Sophisticates everywhere ridiculed the uncompromising Bush stance, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," as a cowboy stunt, but it was swiftly successful. Governments across the Muslim world quickly changed their conduct. Some moved energetically to close down local jihadist groups they had long tolerated, to silence extremist preachers and to keep out foreign jihadis they had previously welcomed. Others were initially in denial... Denial did not last.
Luttwak hits nails one point that is perhaps most important of all: the period after 9/11 was very perilous for world civilization. Astoundingly enough, the village idiot from Texas managed to convert.
The destruction of the twin towers was.. the most powerful possible call to action. It was quite enough to trigger not just a Madrid, a London or a Glasgow attack, but many more in Europe alone. The main target, however, was bound to be the US itself, as well as American tourists, expatriates, business residents and, naturally, any troops anywhere.
Instead, the global jihadi mobilisation, triggered by post-9/11 enthusiasm for Osama bin Laden, was stopped before it could gain any momentum by all that Bush set in motion: the destruction of al Qaeda training bases in Afghanistan, the killing or capture of most of its operatives, and, most importantly, the conversion of Muslim governments from the support of jihad to its repression.
Jihadism has been largely confined to Iraq and the border zones of Pakistan, where guns are fashion statements and jihad the latest excuse for millennial violence. By contrast, since 9/11, attacks against western ("Christian") targets have been few, with not a single attack in the US and just a handful in Europe. It would not have been so if a less determined, less self-confident president had been in the White House. "You are with us or with the terrorists" was the right slogan and the right policy. The post-victory shambles in Iraq is a sideshow by comparison.
If George W. Bush has achieved a great policy success, it was not necessarily due to any great genius. If you take a dimmer view of Bush's dimness than I do, you might say it was due precisely to his simple minded grasp of things. When the Twin Towers went down, Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq and the Taliban, along with their al Qaeda allies, were in power in Afghanistan. Today Hussein and his demented sons are dead, and the surviving remnants of the terrorist coalition are shivering in caves in Pakistan. That is the sort of thing that the Saudis notice. Once they have noticed it, what do they do?
As they saw American special forces and long-range bombers smashing the Taliban, the Saudis began to admit responsibility for having spread extremism through the thousands of schools and academies they financed at home and abroad. An agonising reappraisal of their own Wahhabi form of Islam continues. The Saudi king has convened an inter-faith conference of Muslims, Christians and Jews—a huge step given the Wahhabi prohibitions of any form of amity with non-Muslims. Inside the kingdom, only less extreme preachers now receive public support. Bin Laden had been the Saudis' enemy for years, but it was only after 9/11 that they began actively to hunt down his supporters and made their first moves to discourage rich Saudis from sending money to jihadists abroad. More than a thousand Saudis have been arrested, dozens have been killed while resisting arrest, and Saudi banks must now check if wire transfers are being sent to Muslim organisations on the terrorist list.
A less resolute and robust reaction to 9/11 would not have triggered such events. So here are two non-sycophants who conclude that Bush as been, well, not so much of a disaster as many suppose. I admit to being a conservative and a Republican, and so I am inclined to pleasure when Bush gets something right. But I like to get things right myself, regardless of whether they gratify my vanities. If, as I suggest, the next President continues most of Bush's policies, we will look back on this period as one of general success.
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