Someday the world will thank Bush for shaking up the Middle East
In fact, the US may be stronger now in the region than it was when it was allying itself to oppressive regimes. It is obviously more popular with the youth who adopt US pop culture and dress. American soft power is possibly more effective than the old precarious balancing act to keep the Arab dictators in power. Post-colonial hang-ups about intervention seem to have dissipated with the Arab Spring.
More questions can be raised. How much of the chaos that followed the removal of Saddam was caused by the regimes that the US was ‘engaging’ with? Syria and Iran openly promoted the chaos; but Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Yemen and even the UAE sheikhdoms didn’t help. In invading Iraq, was the US fighting against the whole regional system?
Did the fall of Saddam break the myth about the power of such dictatorships? It is not unrealistic to think that Saddam’s trial could have planted the idea that dictators may face a reckoning in the end. How much did this contribute to the Arab Spring? The Berlin Wall did not fall because somebody kicked it: the ideas propping it up collapsed much earlier, with the Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms in Russia. The idea that the Arab Spring was triggered by a self-immolating street trader in an obscure Tunisian town is just not credible…
A philosopher with an Iraqi background asks the rhetorical question: ‘A young man from the city of Al-Salt in Jordan decides to infiltrate Iraq and blow himself up in a book market together with a couple of hundred people. His family celebrate his martyrdom and people in the area congratulate them on that glory. Why is that the fault of George Bush?’
Blowback
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Doubtful. But I can see 0 getting all the credit.
Bmore on February 9, 2013 at 7:25 PM
Er …. it’s the Islamists! Idiot!
OldEnglish on February 9, 2013 at 7:29 PM
If by “shaking up” you mean “bullrushing a couple standing armies that didn’t stand the chance of a paper dog chasing an asbestos cat through hell”…then yes.
MelonCollie on February 9, 2013 at 7:31 PM
maybe
rob verdi on February 9, 2013 at 7:35 PM
Probably true. But if it’s going to come, it’ll be a couple hundred years from now.
Stoic Patriot on February 9, 2013 at 7:38 PM
He deserves it.
thebrokenrattle on February 9, 2013 at 7:40 PM
No, the world won’t. Because Obama has already undone any good Bush accomplished and is making things even worse.
The Rogue Tomato on February 9, 2013 at 7:41 PM
I agree, no one thanked Harry Truman either, but today we all recognize he succeeded…
JFKY on February 9, 2013 at 7:56 PM
Obama saved the Middle East. Bush killed black people in Nawlins.
xblade on February 9, 2013 at 8:12 PM
Bush’s great error was that, having decided (correctly) that the Arab World needed to be kicked into modernity, he then cast about for a ‘respectable’ reason for using force. Unfortunately, that involved WMD and Saddam Hussein and turned the whole effort into getting rid of one regime for one reason – and the reason didn’t hold up, which eventually weakened his popular support at home.
Had he explained to the World that “The Arab World needs an enema and, for various practical reasons, Iraq is the place to stick the hose,” everyone not educated beyond their capacity would have understood. Our forces could have turned left at Baghdad and proceeded through Syria to the Mediterranean, making it clear that our effort was aimed at Arab political brutalism, not Saddam Hussein. The message would not have been lost on either Arab politicians or Arab dissidents, and the immediate practical benefits for Israel, Jordan and Lebanon would have been considerable.
So: Bush had an opportunity and he mostly blew it. He did some good, but he did it about as cack-handedly as possible.
PersonFromPorlock on February 9, 2013 at 8:23 PM
Probably, though it remains to be seen if Obama has thrown it all away by now.
Count to 10 on February 9, 2013 at 8:39 PM
No, Bush had some 28 solid reasons for taking out Saddam, the strongest of which was that he was in violation of the ceasefire (repeatedly). It was the EU that insisted on hanging on WMDs (which were found), and the press that then played up the angle that the number of WMDs found meant that the war was “based on a lie” in order to score political points for the Democrats.
Count to 10 on February 9, 2013 at 8:44 PM
And the end result would still been an Islamist takeover.
OldEnglish on February 9, 2013 at 8:46 PM
have been …
Fingers, brain – unite!
OldEnglish on February 9, 2013 at 8:53 PM
Also, the left worker really hard to protect Syria after OIF, constantly harping on the idea that going into Syria would be proof that Bush was Hitler.
Count to 10 on February 9, 2013 at 8:55 PM
You are absolutely correct. Bush was right to remove Saddam. He was wrong to describe Islam as a religion of peace. It is in truth anything but. After 11 years of political correctness and with a quasi or closet Muslim in the White House, we are worse off in the Islamist war against Western Civilization than at any time since 1683.
Basilsbest on February 9, 2013 at 9:05 PM
I’m not saying Bush was wrong to take out Saddam: I’m saying he came up with an ‘acceptable’ rationale for doing so that required him to stop once he had, rather than letting him go after Assad as well. That was a big mistake.
The model here is the British invasion of neutral Iceland in WW2, and its subsequent occupation by American forces. Iceland was invaded not because of anything it had done, but because holding Iceland was strategically necessary to the war effort. Likewise, we would have been perfectly justified, as real wars are actually conducted, in invading Iraq and Syria because forcefully reforming Arab governments was necessary to the war against radical Islam, and Iraq and Syria came most readily to hand.
I don’t think Bush really grasped the difference between war and peace, and it made him more reluctant to expand the scope of operations than he should have been.
PersonFromPorlock on February 9, 2013 at 10:11 PM