President Bush has said on more than one occasion that his legacy can't be judged now and I agree, the battles are still too clear in our memory and the animosity still too fresh to make any type of assessment. I believe he was right in the respect of his handling of the war against international terrorism. It will be noted as a turning point and a model way of dealing with terrorists that don't represent a nation-state when viewed from a different paradigm a decade out.
Here's further proof of what I'm talking about as Obama is rekindling a program he screeched against while campaigning:
The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, which was a target of critics during the Bush administration, including Mr. Obama himself.The Times had to give him some cover with that last because we all know that Bush curtailed rights for those who don't have any but now that Obama is doing the same thing it's going to be done in a more legal way. Got it?
Officials said the first public moves could come as soon as next week, perhaps in filings to military judges at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, outlining an administration plan to amend the Bush administration’s system to provide more legal protections for terrorism suspects.
It was a good try and the Times is doing their collective best but there's no way to spin the fact that there's zero difference between his policy the Bush policy:
Continuing the military commissions in any form would probably prompt sharp criticism from human rights groups as well as some of Mr. Obama’s political allies because the troubled system became an emblem of the effort to use Guantánamo to avoid the American legal system.But they'll mute their criticism because, well, Obama is not Bush and he must have a good reason to be pursuing this option. He is taking a nuanced approach unlike that cowboy Bush who was ham-handed at every turn. The circumstance may be the exact same but Obama will do it in a more humane and legal way even though the differences is indistinguishable.
But of course, this sums it up more than anything:
“The more they look at it,” said one official, “the more commissions don’t look as bad as they did on Jan. 20.”Exactly.
The Bush legacy 1: the Bush haters 0.
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3 comments:
Had he stayed the course in Afganistan, put the "boots on the ground" to do the job right and finished that while keeping Saddam contained he might have someday been vindicated. The people I knew who worked around him on a daily basis had the following comments when I ask their opinion of him: "dumb as a box of rocks, he does what his advisers tell him to do". Unfortunately, he got lots of bad advice.
"while keeping Saddam contained"
You and your fictional "people I knew who worked around him on a daily basis" can take a flying leap.
If the left and the rinos and the media in this country hadn't given a pass to the russian, iranian and NK sponsored groups (Answer, NIMN, ISM etc) that "mobilized opposition to the war", we would have crushed the jihadists in the middle east twice over by now.
And we also wouldn't have this crypto muslim socialist destroying us from within.
You really don't believe I'll actually take your opinion on "people you know" do you?
Well, people I know in the Obama administration say that he's taking his lead from Rahm Emanuel and Joe Biden, that would be why he's fallen flat on his face the first 100 days.
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