Bush's Legacy

I've been thinking a lot lately about Bush's legacy after he leaves office and how that compares to other past Presidents in his position. Take Harry Truman for example. His presidency started off with him needing to make a major decision on how to end WWII. He chose to drop the atomic bomb on Japan which ended the war in a matter of days.



Bush, faced similar issues following September 11. He could have responded with a limited operation to take out Bin Laden specifically, he could have used the opportunity to help unite the world. His decision was to invade Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban regime, and capture/take out Bin Laden. His response to Afghanistan, compared to Iraq (which I will get to shortly) was more organized and the overthrow of the Taliban was swift, with minimal casualties. The situation today has remained the same for several years, but compared to Iraq, significant progress has actually been made in Afghanistan. The only major reason troops remain in Afghanistan is to have a base of operations for other tasks, including finding OBL. Perhaps a more imminent threat would be aggressive actions taken by Iran, which borders Afghanistan, putting forces in prime position for any potential ground war with Iran. For this, Bush may be recognized as forward thinking, but no one can forget the catastrophic error when troops let OBL slip through their fingers at Tora Bora in December 2001. Afghanistan, may in the end, be Bush's only bright spot militarily, primarily out of the fact that there are legitimate reasons for being there.



Iraq. What can one say about Iraq? The original reason for invading Iraq was that intelligence reports claimed that Saddam Hussein had been building 'weapons of mass destruction' and had the intention of using them. What few realize, then and even today, is that there was very limited intelligence to support that view at the time. This is why France didn't want to invade Iraq; they had access to similar intelligence and recognized that what the American government was reporting was essentially propaganda, to try and convince the public that this war was necessary. Furthermore, the government claimed that terrorists were basing operations out of Iraq and that there was a threat of future terrorist attacks being launched from there. The last reason was that Saddam Hussein was an evil man who killed his citizens and needed to be overthrown.



Invasion time. The U.S. invades, with the thought in mind that they would be greeted with "flowers and candy" and that they would be in and out of Iraq in a couple of months. Unfortunately, the decision was made to use far fewer troops than was necessary for an operation of that nature. As soldiers come across weapon caches abandoned by the Iraqi Army, they search for WMD's, and when none are found, they must abandon them, due to a lack of troops. No terrorists are found during the invasion. When Bush makes his infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech, things are looking good for Iraq. Soon, the reality sinks in. Soldiers from Saddam's army, disgruntled about the U.S.-led invasion, soon take back the weapons caches that have been abandoned by Coalition troops. These soldiers launch a guerrilla war against the Coalition, and soon a country free of terrorists (outside of the government) becomes a breeding ground. Multiple terrorist organizations have taken advantage of the lack of organization in Iraq to wage their campaigns against the West. When Bush says that we must stay in Iraq to fight the terrorists, this is him trying to cover his butt, because we left the back door open for the terrorists to move in, and essentially GAVE them the ammunition to start a campaign against us. In the end, the only legitimate reason for invading Iraq, from the three I listed earlier, was that Saddam was an evil man, and that he needed to see justice. Saddam is dead, and now the only reason we remain in Iraq is due to self created problems.



An issue that has been developing over the past few months has been the decision of the U.S. military to place missiles along the European border with Russia, in order to intercept missiles from Iran. This, and recent U.S. missile tests, has spurred Russia to have it's own missile tests and to start lining up its own missiles along the border. This has led Russian President Vladimir Putin to make the threats just yesterday that if the U.S. military build up continues, he will target missiles at Europe, suggesting that some of them will be nuclear. This decision, if not reversed, will quickly create a new Cold War between the United States and Russia. This dangerous situation is only augmented by corruption that still exists in Russia, among them being the censorship of media outlets. If a new Cold War is caused by this incident, than every other poorly planned action by President Bush will be overshadowed, and will secure his reputation as the "President who reversed the progress of the 20th Century."

An interesting development during the past week is Bush's apparent attempt to heal his legacy. He seems to suddenly care about global warming, among other issues. It'll be interesting to see how things unfold at the G8 Summit. I doubt, however, that his "flip-flop" in policies will help heal his image in the last year and a half of his presidency, considering his neglect of some of these issues for the past seven years.