The foreign policy legacy of George W. Bush

[ponderingturtle]

In hindsight I have to disagree. He wasn't even a threat to the southern portion of his own country, and seemed to keep things in check, as bad as he was.

It also seems like many people don't really think ISIS is better than him, and of course the current government has not exactly been winning fans with Sunni's with the purges and all.

 

[Loss Leader]

In hindsight I have to disagree. He wasn't even a threat to the southern portion of his own country, and seemed to keep things in check, as bad as he was.

Iraq was at least three nations when Great Britain drew lines basically at random and called it a country. It was an internal mess until a strong dictator suppressed everybody and everything. He did it by pretty horrible means but he may have actually saved lives. He attempted to secularize and westernize Iraq and he appeared to dislike fundamentalists. By 2000, he was content to just sit inside Iraq and rule them, having failed in every foreign adventure he ever tried.

Removing Hussein just uncorked the bottle. All of the old jealousies, suspicions and infighting poured right back out. And we had no plan whatsoever to contain any of it except to promise the factions democracy. Not having arrived at it themselves, they rejected us out of fear, pride and suspicion.

Hussein was a dictator in all the worst senses of that word. But removing him should not have been our priority in 2002.

 

[Upchurch]

Id be nice to have his economy back.

It wasn't W's fault and it certainly wasn't Obama's.

W's recession was in the last part of his presidency.

So... why would you want "his economy back"?

 

[Senex]

George W Bush lied to Americans about Iraq. The world is less stable today than when he started.

 

[Upchurch]

There's not a lot that those of us that disapprove of such methods can do other than tut.

Well, that and occasionally vote.

 

[3point14]

Well, that and occasionally vote.

Good point, well made.

Those of us outside the USA can only tut. And maybe frown. And some of us will drink tea. Pointedly.

 

[sunmaster14]

Iraq was at least three nations when Great Britain drew lines basically at random and called it a country. It was an internal mess until a strong dictator suppressed everybody and everything. He did it by pretty horrible means but he may have actually saved lives. He attempted to secularize and westernize Iraq and he appeared to dislike fundamentalists. By 2000, he was content to just sit inside Iraq and rule them, having failed in every foreign adventure he ever tried.

Removing Hussein just uncorked the bottle. All of the old jealousies, suspicions and infighting poured right back out. And we had no plan whatsoever to contain any of it except to promise the factions democracy. Not having arrived at it themselves, they rejected us out of fear, pride and suspicion.

Hussein was a dictator in all the worst senses of that word. But removing him should not have been our priority in 2002.

Removing Saddam was the right thing to do. He was an extremely dangerous dictator in that he had absolute control over a relatively technologically advanced country of over 25 million people, plus over 100 billion barrels of oil reserves. Making things worse is that he was surrounded by terrified "yes" men who gave him a distorted picture of the real world. If he were still around, or if one of his equally psychopathic sons were, there could be a far more dangerous situation in the region than there is today.

Also, removing Saddam likely saved lives in the long run. Saddam was killing tens of thousands per year on his own through his reign of terror (he killed something like 80,000 Shiites in the south in the aftermath of the first Gulf War), and the sanctions were causing tens of thousands of more deaths per year. If and when a civil war erupted in Iraq (as it did in Syria), you could expect hundreds of thousands of more deaths, as we've seen in Syria, with no end in sight.

Personally, I think the sanctions would have quickly eroded if we had backed down in 2003. UN inspectors would be tossed out again, and even though sanctions would have still existed on paper, Saddam would have rebuilt his nuclear program, just as he claimed he planned to do in his interviews with FBI interrogator George Piro. The resulting arms race would have led to far greater progress in nuclear weapons development in Iran and other countries of the Middle East. Also, absent the US invasion, Qaddafi would not have come clean on his nuclear program and ratted out the Pakistani scientist A Q Khan who was selling centrifuge technology to anybody willing to pay for it (including Iran and North Korea). There is no question that without the invasion, we would be in a far worse place with respect to nuclear proliferation than we are now, and nuclear proliferation really does trump everything else.

As for the current chaos, and the rise of ISIS, I think that is on Obama. If he had kept 10,000 troops in Iraq, ISIS would never have gotten out of Syria and therefore never would have entered the virtuous cycle of growth that success breeds.

 

[sunmaster14]

Tell me more. I'm a big Africa-phile, and can't say I noticed a sudden turn for the better in American policy on the continent at the time........but I'm willing to hear details.

It's absolutely no surprise to me that you haven't heard of Bush's largely successful initiative to combat AIDS in Africa. Most liberals have filters on their ears when it comes to Bush, which lets through only negative information.

Bush is actually something of a hero in sub-Saharan Africa:

HARD ACT TO FOLLOW

Prominent members of Obama's Democratic party, including Hillary Clinton over the weekend, have praised the Republican Bush's Africa initiatives, even while taking issue with most of his other policies.

Although Bush left the international stage unpopular in many parts of the world, he maintained an exalted status in Africa thanks to the programs he started while in office.

"Every place I have traveled in Africa, President Bush is an absolute hero and is credited with saving millions of people’s lives,” said U.S. Representative Karen Bass, a Democrat who is her party's leader in the House of Representatives' subcommittee on Africa.

 

[twinstead]

And Jerry Lewis is a god in France

 

[NoahFence]

As for the current chaos, and the rise of ISIS, I think that is on Obama. If he had kept 10,000 troops in Iraq, ISIS would never have gotten out of Syria and therefore never would have entered the virtuous cycle of growth that success breeds.

How many times do you need to be beat about the head with the fact that Iraq didn't want us as an occupying force there until you accept it?

 

[Upchurch]

Removing Saddam was the right thing to do.

It may have been the right thing to do, but done in the wrong way, it was more harmful than not. History has borne that out.

As for the current chaos, and the rise of ISIS, I think that is on Obama. If he had kept 10,000 troops in Iraq, ISIS would never have gotten out of Syria and therefore never would have entered the virtuous cycle of growth that success breeds.

The US keeping troops in Iraq indefinitely was not sustainable strategy. This was going to happen regardless of who did it and when. If we hadn't taken troops out when we did, it might not have been specifically ISIS, but it would have been a similar group that rushed in to fill the void.

This was an inevitable consequence of Bush's blundering, and truly short-sighted, foreign policy. Blaming Obama is like blaming the medic who takes off field dresssing for the underlying gunshot wound.

 

[fuelair]

Tony do you even think before you type. If they depose the leader and just leave, what happens?

Why do you think we occupied Iraq? It wasn't for ***** and giggles.

Nope, it was to enrich some billionaires and expand their influence in the middle east. At the cost of Iraqi and US lives. But do feel free to continue dreaming!!!

 

[fuelair]

George W Bush lied to Americans about Iraq. The world is less stable today than when he started.

Republickers lie. Always. It is ingrained in them so deeply they cannot function any other way.

 

[fuelair]

For that to be wrong, they would have to be insane. It's the only possible other reason.

 

[ddt]

So if say the it is unconstitutional in its view to prevent the president from using the security apparatus of the US to assassinate his enemies foreign and domestic.

If the President could use the security apparatus to assassinate domestic enemies, why are there still Republican Congress critters? As to foreign enemies, I seem to remember that Congress has authorized, e.g., the "War on Terror".

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

But that was all caused by Obummer, before he was even elected.

Oh no, you have it wrong: Clinton caused the crisis and Bush fixed it before he left with Obama taking credit.

And today's trickle down scumbags would go back to that same screwed up economy and that wretched failed foreign policy.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It wasn't as good as it could have been. Because there were sociopaths in Congress (Republicans) who didn't want Obama to fix the economy because that would have been bad for them politically. They literally wanted the economy to be as bad as possible so they could make Obama a one term President. They failed in that, of course.

But without any doubt whatsoever, the economy would have been even worse if the American people had been dumb enough to put McCain in the White House. Because there wouldn't have been the stimulus that economists agree helped the economy in dire times.

Not to mention withholding funds to rebuild infrastructure. The private economy recovered. What's been more lacking have been jobs in the public sector.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I think the fact "he kept us safe" didn't play very well for Jeb! is a good indicator of how history does and will continue to view GW.

 

[ponderingturtle]

If there is anything I learned from the film Brazil, it is that sometimes innocent people are picked up and tortured to death by minor bureaucratic mistakes. These things happen and are not anyone's fault and really shouldn't be treated as a big deal. It's the way of the world and effective governance.

 

[Allen773]

Tell me more. I'm a big Africa-phile, and can't say I noticed a sudden turn for the better in American policy on the continent at the time........but I'm willing to hear details.

When the Bush administration inaugurated the program in 2003, fewer than 50,000 HIV-infected people on the African continent were receiving the antire*troviral drugs that keep the virus in check and halt the progression toward full-blown AIDS. By the time Bush left office, the number had increased to nearly 2 million. Today, the United States is directly supporting antiretroviral treatment for more than 4 million men, women and children worldwide, primarily in Africa.

This is an amazing accomplishment, especially because it wasn’t supposed to be possible.

Before PEPFAR, the conventional wisdom was that the drug-treatment regimens that were saving lives in developed countries would not work in Africa. Poor, uneducated people in communities lacking even the most basic infrastructure could not be expected to take the right pill at the right time every day. When the drugs are taken haphazardly, the virus mutates and becomes resistant. Therefore, this reasoning went, trying to administer antiretroviral treatment in poor African countries might actually be worse than doing nothing at all.


The Bush administration rejected these arguments, which turned out to be categorically wrong.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...against-aids/2012/07/26/gJQAumGKCX_story.html