More on George W. Bush's Final Week in Office

Part II
(See Part I here)

I swear I was going to write a second post about George W. Bush’s last week, this time focusing on his press conference last Monday. But I missed the boat; in our fast-paced techno world, that’s ancient history now.

So, I will take the easy way out and offer some thoughts by others about the outgoing president. They all say it much better than me anyway!

Debra Saunders weighs in at the Jewish World Review:

Bush showed U.S. is no paper tiger
January 19, 2009

From the day President Bush took office, the long knives were out for him — in ways they will not (and should not) be out for President-elect Barack Obama. The chattering class saw Dubya as a walking style crime in a cowboy suit. They hit Bush for everything — for the way he mangled syntax, for the books he read and because he worked out too much.

Note that now that the buff Obama is taking office, stories gushing about Obama’s daily workouts flood the channels. Oh, yes, and the same people who belittled Bush for sending troops to war even though he only served in the National Guard somehow do not seem to notice Obama’s utter lack of military experience. […]

When the Dems were pushing for a humiliating retreat from Iraq and opinion polls supported troop withdrawal, Bush instead pushed for a troop surge that has made all the difference. Vice President-elect Joe Biden — who voted for the war before he was against it — visited Iraq last week. While there, he promised the Iraqis that America would not withdraw troops in a way that undermines Iraqi security. Yet that was exactly what his party advocated a year ago.

Does Bush get any credit? No, just as he has received little credit for efforts that have prolonged millions of lives, thanks to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Forget considerable goodwill in India and Africa. His good deeds, you see, don’t fit with the prescribed story line that, with Bush in charge, the rest of the world hates us.

Yes, the man also stumbled, and others paid for his mistakes more dearly than he has.

Under Bush’s watch, Osama bin Laden evaded capture.

Worse, Bush’s slowness in changing strategies in Iraq suggested a presidency in a fetal position when Bush should have been managing the store and demanding results.

Weapons of mass destruction? The CIA believed Saddam Hussein had them.

So did Hussein’s lieutenants. I did, too. The conventional wisdom was wrong, but Bush can take comfort in the knowledge that without his efforts, Hussein almost certainly would have outlasted U.N. sanctions, armed himself to the hilt and wreaked unknown havoc in and beyond Iraq. […]

America’s first MBA president turned out to be a poor administrator, more interested in ideas than making the machinery work. He was good at fighting — and winning — ideological battles in Congress, but he never demonstrated a commitment to making his own administration deliver as promised. In putting loyalty at a premium, he overlooked incompetence.

How will history judge Bush?

Osama bin Laden once told Time magazine that the U.S. withdrawal from Somalia after the murder of 18 U.S. troops on a humanitarian mission made him realize “more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat.” Members of al-Qaida have told intelligence officials they never thought Washington would respond to the 9/11 attacks as ferociously as Bush responded. They expected a few bombs to be dropped, no boots on the ground, a swift withdrawal if casualties mounted — the usual short-attention span foreign policy that warped Lebanon, the Persian Gulf War, Somalia, the African embassy bombings and the attack on the destroyer Cole.

Bush showed America’s enemies a country that does not retreat in fear, does not bomb with impunity, and most important, does not desert civilians or foreign governments that trust us. If you think that doesn’t matter, look at Libya, which disarmed its weapons program. And see how much easier Obama’s presidency will be because Bush kept the faith.

Osama bin Laden may live, most likely quivering in a cave. And no one thinks America is a paper tiger anymore.

Thomas Sowell diplomatically analyzes Bush’s mistakes and tragic flaws:

The Bush Legacy
January 19, 2009

… No one in his right mind would say that the Bush administration was flawless. But many of their worst political mistakes were the kinds of mistakes that decent people often make when dealing with indecent people, both domestically and internationally.

The idea with which President Bush arrived in Washington, that he could gain bipartisan support by going along with the Democrats, and not vetoing any bills that Congress passed, ignored the fact that it takes two to tango.

Having proclaimed his goal as bipartisanship, it was he who was blamed when the bipartisanship failed to materialize. Wooing Ted Kennedy and going along with massive government spending did not stop Kennedy from getting up in the Senate and loudly proclaiming that Bush “lied, and lied and lied!” about Iraq. […]

This issue can be debated, and no doubt will be debated for years, if not generations, to come. But the irresponsible charge that “Bush lied” for some nefarious purpose— to trade “blood for oil” or to generate business for Halliburton, for example— is more than a slander against him. It undermines our whole nation and gives comfort to our enemies around the world.

Domestically, the Bush legacy leaves a lot to be desired. Going along with the McCain-Feingold bill restricting free speech was perhaps the Bush administration’s biggest dereliction of duty. Maybe they figured that they could pass the problem along to the Supreme Court to stop it, since this bill so clearly violated the First Amendment to the Constitution.

But the Supreme Court was also guilty of a dereliction of its duty and let the McCain-Feingold bill stand.

Advocating amnesty for illegal aliens was another political disaster, especially when accompanied by denials of the obvious. […]

A mixed bag? Aren’t we all? But an honorable man.

Next, this brilliant article by J.R. Dunn at American Thinker on the brutal beating President Bush had to endure from his haters for eight years:

Bush and the Bush-Haters
January 19, 2009

... [Bush’s] detractors were willing to risk the country’s safety, its economic health, and the very balance of the democratic system of government in order to get at him. They were out to bring him down at all costs, or at the very least destroy his personal and presidential reputation. At this they have been half successful, at a high price for the country and its government. […]

It’s quite true that other presidents have suffered baseless attacks. Lincoln was generally dismissed as an imbecile, an unwashed backwoodsman, and an orang-outang (as they spelled it then). There exists an infamous Confederate cartoon portraying him with devil’s horns and one foot on the Constitution. Next to no one at the time could have foreseen the towering stature Lincoln would at last attain.

Richard M. Nixon probably stands as the most hated president prior to Bush. But that was largely thanks to a relatively small coterie of east-coast leftists and their hangers-on, angered by Nixon’s early anti-communism (which had become more “nuanced” by the time he took office, as the 1970 opening to China clearly reveals.). Nixon had the support of most of the country, the famed “silent majority”, during his first term, and if not for his own personal failings, he would unquestionably have prevailed over his enemies. Difficult though it may be to believe, Nixon was only one paranoid slip away from being considered a great or near-great president

With Reagan, the coterie was even smaller and more isolated. His enemies continually underestimated him as a “B-movie actor” (which, by the way, showed a serious misunderstanding as to how the old studio system actually worked), and were just as continually flummoxed by his humor, his intelligence, and his unexcelled skill at communication. As the outpouring of public emotion surrounding his state funeral made clear, Reagan today stands as one of the beloved of all modern presidents.

Bush is alone at being attacked and denied support from all quarters—even from many members of his own party. No single media source, excepting talk radio, was ever in his corner. Struggling actors and comics revived their careers though attacks on Bush. A disturbed woman perhaps a half step above the status of a bag lady parked outside his Crawford home to throw curses at him and was not only not sent on her way but joined by hundreds of others with plenty of spare time on their hands, an event covered in minute-by-minute detail by major media.

At least two films, one produced play, and a novel (by the odious Nicholson Baker, a writer with the distinction of dropping further down the ladder of decency with each work—from sophisticated porn inVox to degrading the war against Hitler in last year’s Human Smoke) appeared calling for his assassination—a new wrinkle in presidential criticism, and one that the left will regret. And let’s not forget that tribune of the voiceless masses, Michael Moore, whose Fahrenheit 911 once marked the end-all and be-all of political satire but today is utterly forgotten.

While FDR was accused of having engineered Pearl Harbor (as if even an attempted attack on the US would not have been enough to get the country into WW II in real style), no president before Bush was ever subjected to the machinations of an entire conspiracy industry. The 9/11 Truthers, a mix of seriously disturbed individuals and hustlers out to pull a profitable con, accused Bush and his administration of crimes that put the allegations against Roosevelt in the shade, and with far less rational basis. These hallucinations were picked up the mass media, playing the role of transmission belt, and various fringe political figures along the lines of Cynthia McKinney.

But even this pales in light of the actions of the New York Times, which on its downhill road to becoming a weekly shopper giveaway for the Upper West Side, seriously jeopardized national security in the process of satisfying its anti-Bush compulsion. Telecommunications intercepts, interrogation techniques, transport of terrorist captives, tracking of terrorist finances … scarcely a single security program aimed at Jihadi activity went unrevealed by the Times and—not to limit the blame—was then broadcast worldwide by the legacy media. At one point, Times reporters published a detailed analysis of government methods of searching out rogue atomic weapons, a story that was no doubt read with interest at points north of Lahore, and one that we may all end up paying for years down the line. The fact that Bush was able to curtail any further attacks while the media as a whole was working to undermine his efforts is little less than miraculous. […]

As in all such cases, Bush hatred involves a number of factors that will be debated by historians for decades to come. But one component that cannot be overlooked is ideology, specifically the ideologization of American politics. It is no accident that the three most hated recent presidents are all Republican. These campaigns are yet another symptom of the American left’s collapse into an ideological stupor characterized by pseudo-religious impulses, division of the world into black and white entities, and the unleashing of emotions beyond any means of rational control. The demonization of Bush—and Reagan, and Nixon—is the flip-side of the messianic response to Barack Obama. […]

For the country as a whole, the prospects are bleaker. The left is convinced that hatred works, that it’s a perfect tactic, one that will work every time out. They have already started the process with Sarah Palin, their next target in their long row of hate figures. They’re wrong, of course. In a democracy, hatred is not a keeper, as the Know-Nothings, Radical Republicans, segregationists, Birchers, and many others have learned to their eventual dismay. But the process can take a long time to work itself out—nearly a century, in the case of racial segregation—and no end of damage can occur in the meantime. One of the byproducts of the campaign against Bush was to encourage Jihadis and Ba’athists in Iraq with the assurance of a repetition of Saigon 1975 as soon as the mad and bad Bush 43 was gotten out of the way. This time, the price was paid by the Iraqi people. But in the future, the bill may be presented somewhat closer to home.

And as for the “worst president in history” himself, George W. Bush has exhibited nothing but his accustomed serenity. Despite the worst his enemies could throw at him, his rehabilitation has already begun (as can be seen here, here, here, and here). He will be viewed at last as a man who picked up the worst hand of cards dealt to any president since Roosevelt and who played it out better than anyone had a right to expect. As Barack Obama seems to have realized, there is much to be learned from Bush, a man who appears to personify the golden mean, never too despondent, never too overjoyed, and never at any time overwhelmed.

Other presidents may encounter the same level of motiveless, mindless hatred, others may suffer comparable abuse—but we can sure that no one will ever meet it with more equanimity than George W. Bush.

Finally, Dr. Walid Phares, writing at PolitcalMavens.com, argues ...

Bush Will Be Vindicated in the War on Terror
January 19, 2009

… By the time Bin Laden’s men crumbled the towers in Manhattan and the Pentagon on 9/11, four presidents had been advised by their experts to avoid a “global confrontation” with terrorism.

In contrast, George Bush broke that taboo and on October 7, 2001 he declared a “War on Terror.” He should have identified the enemy with its real name, the jihadists, but at least he informed the nation, that indeed, we were at war with “an enemy.” And for that mere fact he was vilified for seven years.

The first root of Bushophobia in the region and within the West comes from those who wanted the U.S public to remain numb until the balance of power would give the advantage to America’s enemies. Two players shattered this game: Usama Bin laden (by attacking too early) and George Bush (by responding too quickly).

2) Why was there an unusual demonization of George Bush by the widest array of regimes, radicals and international opinion makers? Although it will fall to historians to uncover the forces behind this campaign, the unprecedented attacks against the president of the United States are proportional to the powerful changes he wished to accomplish, even if the results didn’t match his initial ideals. In short, Bush dared to “touch” the untouchable: the totalitarian regimes and the ideology of jihadism. The U.S. was tolerated when it bombed and changed regimes in the Balkans, Grenada, Panama and even when it supported Afghanistan’s Mujahidin. But when its president spoke of “spreading democracy” in the region, America was walking into a hornets’ nest.

The financial power of oil from Iran, the Wahabi quarters and even Qatar slaughtered Bush’s image. In a moment of history, his name and changing the status quo merged for seven years, rightly or wrongly, unleashing the wrath of those who wanted to march backward in history: denying women, minorities, and opposition rights and unwilling to reach peace.

3) But was George Bush representing his nation as he challenged regimes and ideologies overseas? The public is yes, the bureaucratic answer is: no. — Indeed, his re-election confirmed that on basic instincts and general directions, Americans mandated Bush to implement the content of his speeches on national security. Joe and Jane knew the enemy out there wanted to do harm unto them. But the intellectual elite of the U.S, including Bush’s own foreign affairs bureaucracy failed him and dodged his ideals. The president and many congressional leaders aimed to advance the agenda of democracy and de-radicalization in the greater Middle East. But undoubtedly the bureaucrats and media elite in the U.S. fought fiercely against these higher goals and crushed most of them. Hence, Bush’s words were aimed well but the high ideals expressed in his public speeches were rarely carried out by the executioners.

Here is a quick list of battlefields and the end results, so far:

Afghanistan: Removing the Taliban and throwing Al Qaeda out of that country was a victory but managing the rise of democratic culture was insufficient.

Pakistan: Pressuring Musharraf to contain Al Qaeda and the Taliban was slow but convincing him to allow elections brought about a more counter jihadi government.

Iraq: Removing genocidal Saddam under any plan was a duty for the UN to accomplish but America accomplished it. However, moving faster to achieve the successful surge earlier and to pressure Iran and Syria would have been a game changer.

Lebanon-Syria: Pushing the Syrian Army out of Lebanon was an achievement but allowing Hezbollah to cannibalize the country is a set-back.

Africa: Fighting Al Qaeda on the continent and countering the Jihadi Mahakem in Somalia, along with local allies was a good first step.

Arab-Israeli Conflict: Backing the Palestinian Authority in its dialogue with Israel and staying firm on Hamas’ terror was right.

Homeland Security: Establishing a homeland security policy was a first step but Congress should have delivered the legal structure needed to isolate extremism and protect civil liberties. The debate will continue but the fact is that America has not been hit since 2001.

Ideological War: President Bush’s speeches until 2006 were cutting edge on trying to name the doctrines of the enemy. However his bureaucracy stopped him from his role as educator in chief. Americans were made to wonder again if Jihad is Yoga!

So what’s the historical bottom line? George W. Bush told the American people that it is a terrorist target and the U.S. needs to take action. The challenge now is for his successor(s) to stay the course or change it. Bush’s national security decisions will certainly be scrutinized by politicians and historians in order to assess their value; but guess what? Americans are growing mature in this increasingly threatening environment. Deep down, a large segment of our society knows that the jihadists aren’t going to practice yoga. The future will clarify further the difference between America’s instincts as embodied by George W. Bush and many of his critics and bureaucrats who got stuck in the 1990s.

So, farewell, President Bush. And greetings, citizen Bush. It was far from perfect. But it was much better than your detractors will ever admit.