Soccer Dad: Judging the president

December 21, 2007

Judging the president

In Bush's 'Axis of Evil' six years later (or here) Charles Krauthammer evaluate President Bush's legacy and gives him 1 1/2 out of 3.

Using Bush's Axis of evil as a yardstick, Krauthammer looks at how the United States under President Bush has fared against all three. Krauthammer considers Iraq a win. (Daniel Pipes, though, would differ.)

Iraq is a different story. Whatever our subsequent difficulties, our initial success definitively rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his monstrous sons. The Hussein dynasty will not -- as it would have, absent the U.S. invasion -- rebuild, rearm and threaten the world.

The taking down of Hussein led directly to Libya's full nuclear disarmament and, undoubtedly, to Iran's 2003 suspension of weaponization. As for Iraq itself, after three years of disorientation, the United States has finally found a winning counterinsurgency strategy.

It took Bush three years to find his general (as it did Lincoln) and turn a losing war into a winnable one. Baghdad and Washington are currently discussing a long-term basing agreement that could give the United States a permanent military presence in the region and a close cooperative relationship with the most important country in the Middle East heartland -- a major strategic achievement.

One problem here is "[i]t took Bush three years to find his general." Comparing Bush with Lincoln doesn't address the collateral damage done in the meantime.

If President Bush has a failure, it's been a failure to communicate. While he has talked eloquently about the war on terror, he hasn't done it enough. He hasn't rallied the country behind him. I can believe that as a result of this administration, the country is safer than it was six years ago. President Bush did see a threat and acted against it.

But consider the failure that Krauthammer had written about previously, Iran.

The administration understands that the NIE's distorted message that Iran has given up pursuing nukes has not only taken any military option off the table but jeopardized any further sanctions against Iran. Making the best of the lost cause, Bush will now go through the motions until the end of his term, leaving the Iranian bomb to his successor.

Fairly or not, President Bush failure to get matters under control in Iraq damaged his credibility. Had he been viewed as reliable, then the NIE probably wouldn't have been a showstopper in terms of action against Iran. However, Iraq has been a political liability for Bush and that's hurt his ability to maneuver elsewhere.

He's also been limited in terms of what he can do regarding North Korea.

North Korea. We did get Kim Jong Il to disable his plutonium-producing program. The next step is for Pyongyang to disclose all nuclear activities. This means coming clean on past proliferation and on the clandestine uranium enrichment program that North Korea once admitted but now denies.

Knowing that we have no credible threats against North Korea, we now come bearing carrots. President Bush writes a personal letter to Kim, in essence entreating him to come clean on his nuclear program so we can proceed to full normalization.

In other words, while there's been progress in Iraq, the administration's record regarding the other members of the axis of evil has been to maintain a holding pattern. Of course that leaves us in a worse position regarding Iran where it is just waiting till it has produced enough fuel for a nuclear bomb.

How will President Bush be judged? I think more positively than his political opponents and critics would say now. (Maybe not as positively as Orson Scott Card does either.)

But given the nature of his efforts as described by Krauthammer, he largely gets an incomplete. What he will have accomplished will be judged by what his successor manages to do. If the United States and the free world continue to fight against radical Islam, he will be seen as the one who recognized the threat and started to oppose it. But right now it's really hard to say how effective he's been.

prsident bush.