PJ Media

America’s President George W Bush will go down in history like President Ford is doing right now. History will show that he was elected President by coin toss when neither party had the courage to run a person of deep conviction and unique vision. Saturday Night Live spoofed it the best in 2000 when they merged the characters of Al Gore and George Bush into their “perfect moderate candidate.” On 911 he showed that he had the character to be a leader by offering hope to men on a mountain of rubble and bodies in NYC, but then he chose not to use that character of hope and comfort and instead kicked back and rode the waters of history rather than steering a course. He finished America’s long drawn-out war with Iraq that (even though we ignore it still today) was the casus belli that made Osama Bin Laden and an army of jihadis decide to go from just talking of killing Americans to actually killing Americans (Al Queda was reborn in 1992 and never started killing Americans until then). The depth of the AQ/Iraq relationship is always debatable, but what history has shown and will show with more clarity is that the side effects of that ignored war period was a splinter war, the global war on terror, America’s War With Jihadis. George Bush took the predominate intelligence of the time, the paranoia (justified or not) of the post911 period, and he set the world on a course to ending the war that had the fragmentary effect of spawning Al Queda. America’s War Against Iraq ended in May 02-MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, and since then it’s been America’s War FOR Iraq. Right or wrong, there was no other way to end the war with Saddam, and now that it’s over America can either support the efforts of our men and women dying overseas, or we can claim to somehow support them while bashing their efforts to the best of our abilities and to the side effect of aiding the insurgents in their strategy aimed at getting the American people to demand of our leaders that we retreat from the battlefield. Make no mistake about it, there is no peace with suicide bombers. They will not just wipe their brows, take off their bomb vests and live happily ever after if the Americans leave Iraq without leaving Iraq stable and secure (the stated objective of Pres Bush, the Iraq Study Group, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, Speaker Pelosi, and Maj ldr Reid). Nope. The time for opposing the war as a means of opposing President Bush is over. Now it is literally do or die, and only those who prefer the bigoted, elitist, snobbery of Keith Olberman, or who get their real news from fake news and believe the fake news is real news ala The Daily Show…only those people who cannot stomach the truth of the war will continue to rave that in 2008 America would be better off with Anybody But Bush.

History cleansed Nixon of his sins. It made Ford a prophetic patriot. It’s proven Carter’s policy of procrastination only made Islamic extremism 1000x worse. It’s canonized Reagan, shown the foolishness of Bush sr’s compassion towards Iraq in his choice to abandon Iraqis who had risen up for freedom as well as the cowardice of not doing the costly and hard thing in 1991 (removing Saddam), and how it’s infinitely more expensive now. It’s shown President Clinton’s wag the dog attack after being impeached was what triggered UBL’s authorization of the 911 plot to be set in motion-to go from campfire banter to mass murder that cost 3000 lives, 2 zip codes, and $2-3 trillion. History will similarly make President Bush to be a rider of history’s river more often than a captain of the ship; a man of great potential, strong resolve, but not much political courage. What a difference a few years and a few wars will make?