Posted on 11/15/2010 5:25:00 AM PST by Kaslin
George W. Bush is sitting on a hotel sofa in front of a south-facing window on a sunny November morning. His presidential memoir, "Decision Points," is No. 1 on amazon.com and is expected to be No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. "I've got a very comfortable life," he says.
"Decision Points," as the title suggests, does not purport to be the full story of Bush's life or his administration. It "provides data points for future historians."
Contrary to stereotype, Bush admits some serious errors up front. He failed to see the "house of cards" in the financial sector that led to the crisis of September 2008.
He should have addressed the immigration issues rather than the Social Security issue when he had political capital from his 2004 re-election victory. He should have stopped in Baton Rouge, La., or returned to Washington rather than fly over New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and he should have deployed active-duty troops earlier to keep order.
Against this list, he also takes time to spotlight accomplishments that neither his supporters nor critics have been talking much about. He argues that his decision to fund experiments only using embryonic stem cells obtained from existing lines has been vindicated by advances in research on adult and other non-embryonic stem cells.
His Millennial Challenge foreign aid reform encouraging free market development is a clear advance over failed aid policies. And his PEPFAR program combating AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean has saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
But some significant material is left out. An early chapter on Iraq ends with the blunder (as Bush admits) of the "mission accomplished" banner in May 2003; a later chapter recounts how he decided we were losing there in spring 2006. What about the three years in between?
The main goal, he writes, was progress in holding elections, which occurred, and that he thought the "light footprint" strategy could succeed. When casualties kept rising, he says, "At first you hope it's a spike, then it's a trend." He decided it had failed in spring 2006.
In the meantime, he writes that he wanted to avoid LBJ-style "micromanaging" and, although he notes he read Eliot Cohen's book "Supreme Command," he apparently didn't follow its recommendation of continual and sometimes acrimonious interaction between commanders in chief and combat generals.
"A president doesn't get to know his generals. I didn't know that Tommy Franks," who was appointed by Bill Clinton, "was from Midland, Texas," his own hometown. "The key to success is to adhere to the line of authority. It's disruptive if the president is talking to the generals all the time."
Why wasn't the surge strategy adopted immediately? "Once I made up my mind to surge, there were a lot of moving parts. I had to convince people in my own administration, I needed new eyes (a new secretary of defense), I had to get beyond the elections, I had to goose (Iraqi prime minister Nouri) Maliki."
The picture one gets from the book and in the hotel room is of a president who suddenly became much more actively engaged in setting a course in Iraq.
He writes that in June 2006 he set up a sort of Team B in the National Security Council to plan a surge strategy. He also makes brief veiled references to the detailed proposals developed outside the government in the following months by Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and retired Gen. Jack Keane.
Bush says that he decided to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in spring 2006, but waited until after the November election and after recruiting Robert Gates. And, he writes, this president who had been reluctant to interact with generals had a recommendation to Gates for the new commander in Iraq: Gen. David Petraeus.
The surge was announced in January 2007, eight or nine months after Bush decided the previous strategy was failing. Bush argues that if he had acted more quickly, there would have been divisions in the government that would have led Congress to cut off war funding.
"The strategic consequences of defeat would have been horrific," Bush says. "Embolden Iran -- shudders through the Mideast -- al-Qaida triumphant." But now he's optimistic about Iraq and about democracy in the region.
As the sun pours in, it's hard not to shiver at how narrowly we avoided disaster and achieved success.
Beat the blame Bushers to the thread.
They’ll be coming soon, I’m sure
LOL That's the exact opposite of the consensus of Bush worshipers here on FR. They all say Bush "tried to warn Congress" about the financial sector and here Bush admits he didn't have a clue.
So it was some other president that offered up the unpaid for Prescription drug benefit and the ballooning of spending?
Surge mattered most, a secured border mattered least.
No. He discusses warning Congress about Fannie/Freddie. He simply says he did not see the dramatic collapse that took place in fall 2008.
Notice it didn’t take long for the BDS sufferers to appear
BDSers are certainly a pathetic collection of pseudo-con losers — they enjoy the ‘deconstructive’ process to the exclusion of anything positive or ‘constructive’. Over the next several years, they will use their chronic whining and negativity both to ‘deconstruct’ all elected Republicans and to destroy the next ‘imperfect’ Republican president — even if that president is someone they (supposedly) supported during the campaign. Bottom line: President Bush is only a temporary fixation, they will move on to others soon enough.
Then his presidency would have been over sooner and we wouldn't have Roberts and Alito.
Exactly and notice five in a row
Calling people like you, Bush Derangement Syndrome sufferers, is not name calling, it is fact. Get yourself to a doctor who can heal you from it. You need it
As opposed to the worshipers? I know which is worse - someone who is blinded by hero worship or someone who is facing reality. I'd rather be the sane one.
Then he was/is a bigger moron than I previously believed.
. . . and notice that they SELF-IDENTIFIED as BDS suffering, pseudo-con losers with a penchant for deconstructive rather than constructive commentary!
Ain't that the truth?
The "Bush tried to warn Congress" yarn was spun by Karl Rove near the end of Bush's second term as an attempt to deflect responsibility for Bush's actions that lead directly to the meltdown that occurred in late 2008.
IMO, this meltdown was supposed to have occurred under Oh!Brother's watch so he could take the blame leaving Bush smelling like a rose.
But, the law of unintended consequences was triggered by Bush's Wall Street banker buddies' greed and the real estate bubble inflated too fast and the system reached the bursting point about 6-months to a year too soon.
So, instead of being able to blame Oh!Brother, Bush's team had to go to work inventing another, alternate story line, featuring Bush as the hero, valiantly trying to warn Congress.
Thankfully, we still have all of the "real" historical data points that show exactly what Bush did and when he did it.
The "provides data points for future historians" line means Bush's book is pure propaganda, which also means that Bush's own Josef Goebbels, Karl Rove, probably had a hand in writing it and this shows he's still trying to rehabilitate Bush's reputation.
He should have addressed the immigration issues rather than the Social Security issue when he had political capital from his 2004 re-election victory.
It's funny that he should mention Social Security and 2004. On June 29, 2004, Bush's appointed SS Director signed the Social Security Totalization Agreement with Mexico. Had that aggreement been approved by Congress, it would have allowed Mexican illegal aliens to collect US Social Security benefits for the time they worked illegally in the US.
Bush never sent the agreement to Congress. He was hoping to sneak it in after his "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" was put into place. Once the illegals were put onto the road to citizenship, Bush would be able to fight for them to get US SS benefits because, "Family values don't stop at the Rio Grande." Apparently, neither do US taxpayer dollars.
His Millennial Challenge foreign aid reform encouraging free market development is a clear advance over failed aid policies. And his PEPFAR program combating AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean has saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Hmmm... That's strange. No mention of his Partnership for Prosperity Agreement (with Mexico) nor the New Alliance Task Force. I guess he doesn't want to take credit for sending billions of US taxpayer dollars to Mexico or for helping get tens of millions of Mexican illegal aliens into the US banking system and destroying the US economy in the process.
Doc,
Have you ever heard the expression, "Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it"?
What do you think it means?
To me, it means remember what politicians like Bush did while in office so that we can recognize it and attempt to stop it when future politicians attempt to do the same thing.
Tell me this. Have you forgiven and/or forgotten Clinton's treason, yet?
If not, why not?
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