History Has Not Yet Judged Bush
Later policy reversals may help Bush's Iraq legacy, but his invasion destroyed a nation and unleashed internal conflict
Iraq will be a cornerstone of Bush's presidential legacy. A large building block of this legacy will appear in 2013 when the George W Bush library opens on the campus of the Southern Methodist University. On display inside will be the 9mm Glock pistol taken from Saddam Hussein when he was dragged out of his spider hole north of Baghdad in December 2003. The memento is evidence of how a legacy is shaped rather than objectively told. So perhaps Bush was right: history will prove him correct, as only few can open libraries in which their own narrative is told.
Mark Langdale, the president of the George W Bush Foundation, admitted that Bush's Iraq story was still being shaped. He told the New York Times how "the gun is an interesting artefact, and it tells you that the United States captured Saddam Hussein and disarmed him literally. How we fit that into the decision to go to war, we haven't gotten to that point yet." Cherry-picking a convenient history to whitewash what Madeleine Albright described as the "greatest disaster in American foreign policy" will take some skilled propaganda. Worryingly, Karl Rove told Fox News in 2008: "History, though, is going to be kind to him at the end. I'm absolutely confident of that".
Certainly Bush's rewriting of his Iraq legacy will be helped by his decision to reverse his earlier policies, abandoning the idealism of the top-down reinvention of Iraq symbolised by Paul Bremer's approach and bringing on board the reality-based pragmatism of David Petraeus, now head of Central Command, Robert Gates, the defence secretary, and Ryan Crocker, US ambassador to Iraq. The success of the "surge" in reducing levels of violence, the election of Barack Obama and the upping of the ante in Afghanistan have led to a general perception of success in Iraq. The former vice-president Dick Cheney in a recent interview proclaimed that in Iraq "we've accomplished nearly everything we set out to do".
Robert McNamara's death provides an interesting contrast into the construction of history around the great events of our time. His appearance in the remarkable documentary Fog of War was a grasp at redemption from a man somewhat haunted by his past actions. In the film he asks, "What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?" Saddam may have lost both his grasp on Iraq and his life, but he may continue to haunt Bush from the grave.
Indeed, earlier this month it was revealed that FBI special agents carried out 20 formal interviews and at least five "casual conversations" with the former dictator after his arrest in 2003, according to secret FBI reports released as the result of Freedom of Information Act requests by the National Security Archive.
In "casual conversation (pdf)" with Arabic-speaking supervisory special agent George Piro, Saddam called Osama bin Laden a "zealot", stated his belief in the separation of religion and state and explained that he was not against the US but rather its policies. Curiously the interview about Saddam's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in the 1980s was totally redacted (pdf).
It is easy to dismiss Saddam's words out of hand as the lies of a madman anxious to deny his role in Iraq's bloody history, indeed although we were denied information about his actions towards the Kurds we learn that he justified the draining of the southern marshes to protect the "national interest".
However, the interviews are further evidence that Saddam was more of a brutal pragmatist fixated on keeping power rather than an ideologue hellbent on attacking the US. This was the opinion of the mainstream expertise on Iraq at the time, with only suspect intelligence suggesting otherwise (later Bush admitted that "most of the intelligence turned out to be wrong").
Everybody involved with Iraq and aware of its history can only hope for a better future for its beleaguered citizenry. But does hope for a better future allow for the rewriting of a disastrous past? Saddam eventually paid for his past in a dingy execution room; Bush's legacy is still a work in progress. McNamara once said that, "any military commander who is honest with himself, or with those he's speaking to, will admit that he has made mistakes in the application of military power. He's killed people unnecessarily -- his own troops or other troops -- through mistakes, through errors of judgment. A hundred, or thousands, or tens of thousands, maybe even a hundred thousand. But he hasn't destroyed nations."
Bush's 2003 invasion destroyed what was left of the Iraq state, and his mismanagement of the postwar phase unleashed a conflict between a deeply divided nation. The jury of history is still out.
Follow James Denselow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JamesDenselow
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Im curious what Barack Obama's library will look like when he opens at after a one -term presidency. His legacy will be something along the lines of "well..he f***ed everything up, and no idea what he was doing, but he was a nice guy."
"The success of the "surge" in reducing levels of violence, the election of Barack Obama and the upping of the ante in Afghanistan have led to a general perception of success in Iraq."
Oh yeah! Since the voters went for someone who was against the Iraq war from the beginning, who campaigned against the GOP by citing how badly Bush screwed up, and who promised to get us out of the quagmire, that just PROVES the "general perception of success in Iraq"!
What was the writer smoking when he came up with that line?? In addition, it is not "agreed" that the surge lowered violence as much as paying off our (former) enemies to be our (temporary) friends lowered violence. And the fact that we needed to get on top of the situation in Afghanistan does not show "success in Iraq" any more than the fact that we need to get on top of the Health Care situation shows "success in Iraq".
That Bush keeps Saddam's gun on his wall is revealing. Bush always let symbols do his thinking for him and not evidence and forethought.
That little hand gun was all Bush could come up with to prove that Saddam was dangerous and armed to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction.
Some are so invested in "failure, lies, mistakes, mismanagement" in Iraq that they will forever see the outcome through biased eyes regardless and independent of what that outcome truely is. EG Senator Reid's "we have lost the war in Iraq".
Even if Iraq does become stable, there's no evidence whatsoever that it will serve as a "beacon of democracy" that magically transforms the entire middle east into something more to our liking. And most importantly, even a successful outcome will not be able to erase the fact that far more Iraqi civilians have been killed since the war began than Hussein managed to massacre during his entire regime. Notwithstanding the obscene amount of money far out of proportion to any prospective benefits that could have resulted from such an invasion, history will ultimately reflect on this as a wasteful expenditure of military and financial resources and needless loss of life, all expended for the purpose of eradicating one who was no worse than Francisco Franco, and who posed no threat to anyone beyond his own borders.
Oh yes, it has ! Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and Ms. Rice are responsible for thousands of military troops who were injured and now are missing limbs or their minds because of Mr. Bush's illicit, wrongful war in Iraq. History must note that "but for" Bush's illicit acts, those young people would be whole and would not require lifetime medical care from the government. Egregious acts. It is unfortunate that he cannot be sued for his wrongful decisions. Think of the thousands here, and abroad that gave their lives for an unworthy cause. Why does anyone - I mean ANYONE- support George W Bush. Why is he not anathema
Let's hope that future generations are not so gullible as to believe it was perfectly OK for the United States to invade a foreign country that was no threat to its national security and to depose, capture and execute its leader. Could anyone be so naive as to believe all that is OK as long as Iraq recovers from the devastation that resulted from that invasion (less the tens of thousands of of Iraq residents who were killed or maimed in the process, not to mention U.S. and other casualties
Bush's legacy will be the president who killed the republican party.
The Bush Library is a misguided means of nudging history into a more convenient truth. Libraries are not resort destinations. The money would be better spent building an Iraq themed amusement park, with exciting rides and an Audioanimatronic West Wing. Get your picture taken pointing at an Abu Ghraib Prisoner Pyramid! Touch down on the deck of a carrier at the Mission Accomplished Roller Coaster. Experience the Shock and Awe Pavilion! Texas is dry and looks a lot like Iraq, Ordinary people - Bush folks - would pay good money to visit a place like that. Replenish the ol' coffers and burnish the image! Win - Win. Bush Gardens would have been the perfect name, but it's taken, more or less.
He does realize that original documents/
I wouldn't believe everything Saddam told the FBI and don't understand why others do. I wrote about this at www.regime
I don't see how Bush can have a legacy when the United States has no future. People now living, all over the globe, hate George Bush. A cruel and petulant child, playing at war. When he is gone from living memory, future generations who care to study such things will associate him with the false flag attack of 9/11 and with the death of our republic due to terminal corruption.
Bush may be able to manipulate history as he manipulated Congress, the press, and the American public for eight years. He is a hard guy to figure- more a cheerleader than a thinker and always ready to let subordinates make policy as long he he got credit for any successes. One even wonders if Bush knew what was going on through most of his presidency. Still, I think historians will not be fooled by Bush. They will name him to be the inflated egoist, unthinking primitive he was with a callous mask of superiority on his face hiding an insecure little boy on the inside. It will take longer than the eight years Bush governed to undue the damage that he did to the country.
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