The Bush Legacy. By Charles Krauthammer. National Review Online, April 25, 2013. Also at the Washington Post.
He left behind an inconclusive war, but he made ultimate victory possible.
Krauthammer:
Clare
Boothe Luce liked to say that “a great man is one sentence.” Presidents, in
particular. The most common “one sentence” for George W. Bush (whose legacy is
being reassessed as his presidential library opens) is: “He kept us safe.”
Not
quite right. He did not just keep us safe. He created the entire anti-terror
infrastructure that continues to keep us safe.
That
homage was paid, wordlessly, by Barack Obama, who vilified Bush’s anti-terror
policies as a candidate, then continued them as president: indefinite
detention, rendition, warrantless wiretaps, special forces and drone warfare,
and, most notoriously, Guantanamo, which Obama so ostentatiously denounced —
until he found it indispensable.
Quite a
list. Which is why there was not one successful terror bombing on U.S. soil
from 9/11 until last week. The Boston Marathon attack was an obvious security
failure, but there is a difference between 3,000 dead and three. And on the
other side of the ledger are the innumerable plots broken up since 9/11.
Moreover,
Bush’s achievement was not just infrastructure. It was war. The Afghan campaign
overthrew the Taliban, decimated al-Qaeda, and expelled it from its haven. Yet
that success is today derogated with the cheap and lazy catchphrase — “He got
us into two wars” — intended to spread to Afghanistan the opprobrium associated
with Iraq.
As if
Afghanistan was some unilateral Bush adventure foisted on the American people.
As if Obama himself did not call it a “war of necessity”; and Joe Biden, the
most just war since World War II.
The
dilemma in Afghanistan was what to do after the brilliant, nine-week victory?
There was no good answer. Even with the benefit of seven years’ grinding
experience under his predecessor, Obama got it wrong. His Afghan “surge” cost
hundreds of American lives without having changed the country’s prospects.
It
turned out to be a land too primitive to democratize, too fractured to unify.
The final withdrawal will come after Obama’s own six years of futility.
Iraq
was, of course, far more problematic. Critics conveniently forget that the
invasion had broad support from the public and Congress, including from those
who became the highest foreign-policy figures in the Obama administration —
Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, and Biden.
And
they forget the context — crumbling sanctions that would in short order have
restored Saddam Hussein to full economic and regional power, well positioning
him, post-sanctions, to again threaten his neighbors and restart his WMD
program.
Was the
war worth it? Inconclusive wars never yield a good answer. Was Korea worth it?
It ended with a restoration of the status quo ante. Now 60 years later, we face
nuclear threats from the same regime that was not defeated in a war that cost
ten times as many American lives as Iraq.
The
Iraq War had three parts. The initial toppling of the regime was a remarkable
success — like Afghanistan, rapid and with relatively few U.S. casualties.
The
occupation was a disaster, rooted in the fundamental contradiction between
means and ends, between the “light footprint” chosen by General George Casey
and the grand reformation attempted by Paul Bremer, who tried to change
everything down to the coinage.
Finally,
the surge, a courageous Bush decision taken against near-universal opposition,
that produced the greatest U.S. military turnaround since the Inchon landing.
And inflicted the single most significant defeat for al-Qaeda (save
Afghanistan) — a humiliating rout at the hands of Iraqi Sunnis fighting side by
side with the American infidel.
As with
Lincoln, it took Bush years of agonizing bloody stalemate before he finally
found his general and his strategy. Yet, for all the terrible cost, Bush
bequeathed to Obama a strategically won war. Obama had one task: Conclude a
status-of-forces agreement and thus secure Iraq as a major regional ally. He failed
utterly. Iraq today is more fragile, sectarian, and Iranian-influenced than it
was when Bush left office — and than it had to be.
Like
Bush, Harry Truman left office widely scorned, largely because of the
inconclusive war he left behind. In time, however, Korea came to be seen as but
one battle in a much larger Cold War that Truman was instrumental in winning.
He established the institutional and policy infrastructure (CIA, NATO, Truman
Doctrine, etc.) that made possible ultimate victory almost a half-century
later. I suspect history will similarly see Bush as the man who, by trial and
error but also with prescience and principle, established the structures that
will take us through another long twilight struggle, and enable us to prevail.
