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Bush's Legacy
Well he is with us in this presidential form for another week so it's time to reassess him.
Has he anything with which to defend himself?
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Certainly. First and most important, he would argue, he protected the US after September 11, 2001. No small feat, that.
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Mr Bush and his much vilified Vice-President Dick Cheney insist that this is the flip-side of some of the most controversial measures of his presidency: the detention programmes; interrogation techniques and restrictions on civil liberties at home.
Second, though much derided, Mr Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Middle East has borne some fruit. After a disastrous three years, the Iraq war is largely won and that benighted nation seems tentatively set on a course of pluralist democracy, just as Mr Bush said it would, and the very idea his opponents scoffed at.
It was a big, bold and perhaps crazy exercise, but history may judge that the US-led effort from Kabul to Baghdad in the early years of the 21st century laid the foundations for the kind of progress in a region that has not seen much of it in the last 500 years.
There were smaller achievements too: Mr Bush’s very personal effort to lead vast programmes for the eradication of AIDS in Africa; much improved relations with China and India, the two emerging powers of the next century; a steadfast commitment to keep trade flowing, in spite of hostility at home and around the world.
So here we have it from the liberal media
Has he anything with which to defend himself?
.
Certainly. First and most important, he would argue, he protected the US after September 11, 2001. No small feat, that.
.
Mr Bush and his much vilified Vice-President Dick Cheney insist that this is the flip-side of some of the most controversial measures of his presidency: the detention programmes; interrogation techniques and restrictions on civil liberties at home.
Second, though much derided, Mr Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Middle East has borne some fruit. After a disastrous three years, the Iraq war is largely won and that benighted nation seems tentatively set on a course of pluralist democracy, just as Mr Bush said it would, and the very idea his opponents scoffed at.
It was a big, bold and perhaps crazy exercise, but history may judge that the US-led effort from Kabul to Baghdad in the early years of the 21st century laid the foundations for the kind of progress in a region that has not seen much of it in the last 500 years.
There were smaller achievements too: Mr Bush’s very personal effort to lead vast programmes for the eradication of AIDS in Africa; much improved relations with China and India, the two emerging powers of the next century; a steadfast commitment to keep trade flowing, in spite of hostility at home and around the world.
So here we have it from the liberal media
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