GayandRight

My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam. I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Bush's legacy....

In twenty years, he will look a lot better than now...
George W Bush will be remembered for his responses to 9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq, but since neither of those conflicts has yet ended in victory or defeat, it is far too early categorically to assume - as left-wingers, anti-war campaigners and almost all media commentators already do - that his historical reputation will be permanently down in the doldrums next to poor old Warren Harding's.

I suspect that historians of the future will instead see Bush's decision to insist upon a "surge" of reinforcements being sent into Iraq, combined with a complete change of anti-insurgency tactics as configured by General Petraeus, as the moment when the conflict was turned around there, in the West's favour.

No one - least of all Bush himself - denies that mistakes were made in the early days after the (unexpectedly early) fall of Baghdad, and historians will quite rightly examine them. But once the decades have put the stirring events of those years into their proper historical context, four great facts will emerge that will place Bush in a far better light than he currently enjoys.

The overthrow and execution of a foul tyrant, Saddam Hussein; the liberation of the Afghan people from the Taliban; the smashing of the terrorist networks of al-Qa'eda in that country and elsewhere and, finally, the protection of the American people from any further atrocities on US soil since 9/11, is a legacy of which to be proud.

While of course every individual death is a tragedy to the bereaved families, these great achievements have been won at a cost in human life a fraction the size of any past world-historical struggle of this magnitude.

The number of American troops killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan is equivalent to the losses they endured - for a nation only a little over half the size in the mid-Forties - capturing a single island from the Japanese in the Pacific War.

British losses of 103 killed over seven years in Afghanistan bears comparison to a quiet weekend on the Western Front in the Great War, or the numbers the Army loses in traffic accidents in peacetime. History can lend a wider overall perspective to what are nonetheless, of course, immeasurably sad events.

History will also shine an unforgiving light on those ludicrous conspiracy theories that claim that the Iraq War was fought for any other reason than to implement the 14 UN resolutions that Saddam that had been flouting for 13 years.

The CIA and MI6 believed, like almost every other intelligence agency in the world, that Saddam had WMD, and the "Harmony" documents seized and translated since the fall of his regime make it abundantly clear that he was also supporting almost every anti-Western terrorist organisation imaginable.

Historians will appreciate how any War Against Terror that allowed Saddam to remain in place would have been an absurd travesty.

When the rise of al-Qa'eda is considered by historians like Philip Bobbitt and William Shawcross, it will be President Clinton's repeated refusal to act effectively in the 1990s, rather than President Bush's tough response after 9/11, that will be held up as culpable.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I fear that History will show that 9/11/01 was the begining of the end to all moderm Liberties and the Leftists aided in the slow erosion by their willful ignorance and overt denial to place the blame on the actual Terrorists
and mass-murdering Dictator thugs that they failed to denounce from the Unifying bond of Hatred for Israel and any Republican President of the USA .

Even canadians were fooled by Chretien who avoided the "M" word and had the nerve to visit a Mosque as a PR stunt to appease Muslims that Islam had nothing to do with it , this Chretien did BEFOR going to ground Zero to admit that 24 Canadians were slaughtered and sacrificed on the altar of Multiculturalism by the little Plaque hidden away in Ottawa that only claims the 24 Civilians died in a Plane crash when it stuck a office tower.

Yeah ....right , and John Merrick
(Elephant man) had a slight puffyness around the nose and forehead.

5:48 PM  
Blogger Johnathon said...

I find it funny how the leftist loons try to pretend their all about human rights.

If it was up to the Chretiens and his moonbat followers, Saddam would still be in power killing his own people.

The left doesn't care about human rights at all, they only care about themselves and their welfare checks.

They are a disgusting bunch of goofballs who should be shipped first class to Iran so we don't have to deal with there "despot" ideology.

7:18 PM  

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