U2DMfan said:
The PR problem Bush has, is his competency and the lack thereof.
Ethically, you could accuse any President of wrong-doing because that becomes the nature of the beast. Even Reagan had the Iran-Contra affair hanging around his neck, Clinton had bedroom problems, they are both the most popular Presidents since JFK.
In fact most of their harshest critics would admit a certain level of competency in both cases.
With GWB, it is transcending politcal parties and idealogical boundaries. The public perception of his competency was never strong even among those who supported him in 2000. They voted for him because of conservative, Christian values and a big electable last name, not because he ran an oil company into the ground and piloted a baseball franchise to severe medicority.
If this were an ethics number, I'd guess it'd be higher.
I don't think it's all that difficult to assess the situation (if one were a Bushie) and quickly come to the conclusion that he's still a good guy, probably meant well and just didn't have the tools (read:the ability to listen to dissenting opinions) to make a very good decision. If he's lost 15% or so of his support, I'd guess these people think something very similar. Rather than buy into the war crime argument or something.
Basically, I think for that 15% or so that is bailing, the social concerns are just outweighed by a ton of other more pressing problems.
If the SC overturns Roe in the next 20 months, he'll be seen as a revolutionary in the Republican and conservative circles. He'll take on mythic status. Otherwise, socially he's done nothing for his base or anyone else besides cut taxes for the rich. What about the history books will rewrite itself about the intelligence failures and the post war planning? It will not rewrite itself. Short of this thing turning around before 2010, it will become a debacle or it will have been turned around at the hands of someone else, who will take and be given credit.
Where would Bush fall into that mix historically?
Exactly as the history is and will be written.
Book after book, from Tenet's latest to Sheuer (sp?) to Richard Clarke, to Colin Powell speaking through his assistant Wilkinson, to Woodwards book, written from inside the Oval office.
They all say the same thing.
Some folks are waiting for a magic bullet to appear.
Bush will not be able to escape the last 4 years, period.
If democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan take hold and revolutionize the middle east, the whole thing turns around blah blah blah wine and roses etc., it will be the interventionalist foreign policy that gets the credit, dare I say, the actual neocons, the Perle and Kristol crowd who will look like geniuses, and their defense will ultimately be "had we had better leadership, we'd have saved time, money and lives" and the culprit then becomes, Bush, Cheney and Rummy. Fall guys, and if the circumstances were such, rightfully so. This administrations' goose is cooked barring a miracle in the next two years.
History is not written and decided by books written at the moment in a heated political environment, but in broad detailed analysis done decades after the events, and untainted by the political storm surrounding the events at that time.
Truman had plenty of intelligence and planning failures on his watch. History has not rewritten those failures, but instead has put them into proper context. History does not judge by the political winds of the moment or simply mistakes and failures. It considers everything, as well as the scale of what is being done and accurately compares the cost, victorys, defeats, mistakes etc, t to other moments in history. Truman left office with a 22% approval rating, but today is consider one of the greatest Presidents of all time.
The Bush administration successfully removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and has set up the most successful occupation and reconstruction mission in the history of Afghanistan. Despite the fact that Afghanistan is a more fractured society than Iraq in terms of ethnic diversity, has 5,000 year history of warlordism and civil war, the country is making good progress given the position it was starting from in 2001. Al Quada has been driven from Afghanistan and most violence that still occurs is from Taliban fighters hiding in the mountains just across the border in Pakistan. After nearly 6 years of occupying Afghanistan, the United States military has suffered 206 troops killed by hostile fire. At the same time during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Soviets had suffered 8,500 troops killed by hostile fire! These facts are often hidden or not discussed by the media and politics of today, but will be well examined by history balancing out the assessment that history will make about President Bush.
On Iraq, history will of course look at the reason for the war, Saddam Husseins regimes behavior and capabilities. It will examine the history of his time in power, not just the events of 2003. The largest use of WMD by any leader in history, 4 unprovoked invasions and attacks on other countries, coming close to siezing or sabotaging the majority of the planets energy supply, as well as maintaining one of the largest military forces in the world with WMD capabiliites.
Saddam spent 12 years playing games with UN inspectors, pretending to comply with disarmament and then blocking efforts to verify this and finally kicking out all UN inspectors in total violation of the 1991 Gulf War Ceacefire agreement. It was never incumbent upon the United States or any other member state of the UN to prove that Saddam had WMD, it was incumbent upon Saddam to verifiably disarm of all WMD and related programs and he failed to do so. Thousands of stocks of WMD remained unaccounted for according to UN insepectors. Intelligence before the 1991 war showed that Saddam was 8 years away from getting a nuclear weapon. Afterwards it was found he was only 6 months away. In 2003, specific intelligence in regards to Iraqi WMD proved to be inaccurate. What this simply shows is that "intelligence" cannot accurately tell whether a country does or does not have certain types of WMD/programs and that uncooperative regimes like Saddam's would have to be removed if the ultimate goal is to insure the regime is completely disarmed and will never again be able to rearm with such weapons. Ironically, the "failure of intelligence" in this case is actually a justification for regime removal since the peaceful means of containing Saddam and insuring disarmament are obviously inadequate, at least in this case. Just as important, the inability to maintain a full proof sanctions and embargo on such a country will insure that any sort of containment/disarmament regime will fail. Sanctions and the weapons embargo started to crumble in the year 2000.
The planning failures for the post occupation phase in the summer of 2003 do not change the fact that the scale of what was being done is enormous and would entail heavy cost, even if the perfect plan was being executed from day 1. Nation Building/Counter insurgency tasks involve enormous difficulties and require extensive amounts of time in order to be successful, even without hostile elements within the country trying to sabotage the effort. History will note this and will assess Iraq on the basis of past nationbuilding/counterinsurgency efforts in other country's. While Afghanistan has been comparatively vastly more successful in several area's, it does not change the fact that Iraq has made amazing progress as well, despite the difficult circumstances. Afghanistan tends to be more of the exception and Iraq the rule in terms of the cost of successfully completely such nationbuilding/counterinsurgency efforts.
While the time it will take to successfully complete the effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan will last long beyond the Bush administrations time in office, the most important actions and events will have occured while Bush was in office. The next President will either pre-maturely withdraw from Iraq creating a potential disaster and new security threats for the United States, or they will enherit and become the caretaker of Bush administration policy in Iraq and will see the nationbuilding/counterinsurgency task started and implemented by Bush to its completion, for which Bush will get most of the credit for considering the most difficult time in such a long operation is always at the start, not at the end.
As for the books that have been written about the war, Tenets in several ways actually defends administration policy. Woodwards books have been discredited in many ways going all the way back to the one he wrote about the Bush Sr. administration. Both Tenet and Powell have gone on record as saying that certain events and things said in Woodwards book are simply inaccurate. Colin Powell does not speak through his assistent, he speaks for himself. Colin Powell has clearly stated that when it came to the question of the use of force against Saddam's Iraq, he agreed with the President, that it was not tolerable for Saddam to remain in violation of 17 UN Security Council resolutions and that he was right there with the President on the use of military force to remove Saddam from power. He stated this clearly on the Barbra Walters special he went on in either 2004 or 2005.
Once again, the books written in the political heat of the moment do not decide history. In addition, Presidents get the credit or the blame for policies. Provided the next administration does not withdraw pre-maturely from the course set by Bush, the operation in Iraq will succeed and Bush will get most of the credit given that nationbuilding/counterinsurgency operations are always more difficult in the early years than towards the end of the operation.
The Bush administrations "goose" is no more cooked than Trumans administration. Just look at the cost of the Truman administrations intelligence failures in the Korean war. Again, history does not rewrite such failures, it puts them into proper context. It considers everything, as well as the scale of what is being done and accurately compares the cost, victories, defeats, mistakes, benefits to other relevent moments in history to arrive at an accurate assessment of the topic or issue. Provided the United States does not withdraw prematurely from Iraq, it will succeed in rebuilding the country. In that case history will indeed be on Bush's side. But even in the case of a pre-mature withdrawal by the next administration, history will likely still be with Bush. The threat Saddam posed to the region and the world is obvious given Saddam history and capabilities as well as the close proximity of much of the planets energy reserves to Saddam's Iraq, plus the need to stabilize and build Iraq after his removal given Iraq's location in the Gulf will be easily recognized as well. Despite the mistakes in the occupation phase early on, on both the issues of removing Saddam, and rebuilding Iraq, overall Bush did the right thing.
