Jay Brookman: Recasting Bush as the hero of Iraq is taking things much too far
[Jay Bookman is a columnist and blogger at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.]
...“Some Americans ask me, if completing the mission is so important, why don’t you send more troops?” Bush said in a typical speech in 2005. “If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job. Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight.”
Look, I’m not trying to dredge up ancient disputes here, and I’m not looking for another chance to bash the ex-president. He has left office, and history will now reach its own verdict on his leadership and judgment. I’m fine with that. I will also acknowledge, as I have in the past, that the 2007 surge and the change in military leadership that Bush finally implemented were more successful in rebuilding security than I and many others, including Barack Obama, had expected at the time. As I also noted earlier today, Obama doesn’t deserve a huge amount of credit for this withdrawal process, because he has merely followed the timeline set by Bush.
For that and many other reasons, it was perfectly appropriate for Obama to call Bush today as a matter of courtesy, and I hope and expect that the president will treat his predecessor with grace in tonight’s remarks.
All that said, however, it is also impossible to sit silently by while the Republicans try to rewrite a history that remains so fresh in so many minds. The invasion of Iraq was not a triumph of the Bush years, it was his greatest single mistake and probably the single greatest foreign-policy blunder in U.S. history.
Read entire article at Atlanta Journal-Constitution
...“Some Americans ask me, if completing the mission is so important, why don’t you send more troops?” Bush said in a typical speech in 2005. “If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job. Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight.”
Look, I’m not trying to dredge up ancient disputes here, and I’m not looking for another chance to bash the ex-president. He has left office, and history will now reach its own verdict on his leadership and judgment. I’m fine with that. I will also acknowledge, as I have in the past, that the 2007 surge and the change in military leadership that Bush finally implemented were more successful in rebuilding security than I and many others, including Barack Obama, had expected at the time. As I also noted earlier today, Obama doesn’t deserve a huge amount of credit for this withdrawal process, because he has merely followed the timeline set by Bush.
For that and many other reasons, it was perfectly appropriate for Obama to call Bush today as a matter of courtesy, and I hope and expect that the president will treat his predecessor with grace in tonight’s remarks.
All that said, however, it is also impossible to sit silently by while the Republicans try to rewrite a history that remains so fresh in so many minds. The invasion of Iraq was not a triumph of the Bush years, it was his greatest single mistake and probably the single greatest foreign-policy blunder in U.S. history.