Guardian UK: The time has come for a final report on the 43rd president of the US

[marmar]

The time has come for a final report on the 43rd president of the US
The man who set out to reinforce unbridled American power has weakened it in all three essential dimensions

Timothy Garton Ash
The Guardian, Thursday September 25 2008



As the two men who would succeed him train like Olympic athletes for tomorrow's foreign policy debate, pause for a moment to complete your final report on the 43rd president of the United States. What would you say?

I would sum up his two terms in four words: hubris followed by nemesis.

Remember the mood music of eight years ago. The greatest power the world has ever seen. Rome on steroids. An international system said to be unipolar, and Washington's unabashed embrace of unilateralism. The US as "Prometheus unbound", according to the neoconservative commentator Charles Krauthammer. Wall Street investment bankers bestriding the financial globe as Pentagon generals did the military globe and Harvard professors the soft power one. Masters of the universe. Personifying that hubristic moment: George Walker Bush.

And now: nemesis. The irony of the Bush years is that a man who came into office committed to both celebrating and reinforcing sovereign, unbridled national power has presided over the weakening of that power in all three dimensions: military, economic and soft. "I am not convinced we are winning it in Afghanistan," Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional committee earlier this month. Many on the ground say that's an understatement. The massive, culpable distraction of Iraq, Bush's war of choice, leaves the US - and with it the rest of the west - on the verge of losing the war of necessity. Here, resurgent in Afghanistan and Pakistan, are the jihadist enemies who attacked the US on September 11 2001. By misusing military power, Bush has weakened it.

Economically, the Bush presidency ends with a financial meltdown on a scale not seen for 70 years. The proud conservative deregulators (John McCain long among them) now oversee a partial nationalisation of the American economy that would make even a French socialist blush. A government bailout that will total close to a trillion dollars, plus the cumulative cost of the Iraq war, will push the national debt to more than $11 trillion. The flagships of Wall Street either go bust or have to be salvaged, with the help of government or foreign money. Most ordinary Americans feel poorer and less secure. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/25/georgebush.republicans

[valerief]

1. I think John Oliver had it right last night. Bush isn't trying to be the worst

president. He's trying to be the last president.

[marmar]

2. Scary.....but probably true.

:scared:

[malaise]

3. Bingo n/t

[JenniferJuniper]

4. A murder/suicide.

[marmar]

5. I wish he'd leave us out of it.....

n/t

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. The British are usually more tactful

This pulls no punches.

[gatorboy]

7. Favorite paragraph:

For years now, we have seen those who hate the US abusing and burning effigies of Bush. The truth is, the anti-Americans should be building gilded monuments to him. For no one has done more to serve the cause of anti-Americanism than GW Bush. It is we who like and admire the US who should, by rights, be burning effigies. But now, at last, we live in hope of a better America.

[marmar]

8. Yup. That graph sums it up nicely.

n/t