Saturday, March 06, 2010

Is This How History Will View Bush?

Interesting editorial by Richard Grenell in Al Jazeera on the current Iraqi elections.

On January 10, 2007, George W Bush, the then US president, defied critics and ignored popular opinion and political polls in the US by committing more than 20,000 additional American troops to the war in Iraq.

"The Surge," as it is commonly called, has since been credited with bringing the Iraqi people more security, less violence and greater freedoms. By July 2008, the surge was heralded as a success from Baghdad to Boston.


Grenell also has some choice quotes from Obama, Biden and H. Clinton on their view of The Surge.

There is no doubt that the war was costly and the planning and handling of the immediate post-war situation was pretty well botched. Also, the rhetoric for the war was unfortunately focused too much on WMD instead of the facts of S. Hussein's greater non-WMD threats to peace, security, and freedom.

Run the counterfactual for me, please. What if the US had not invaded Iraq back in 2003? Quick bottom line: would the Middle East and the rest of the world be more or less secure than we are now? Would the prospect for longterm peace, security and freedom in the Middle East be more or less than now?

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