What is your opinion on George W. Bush?

I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 for the first time over the weekend and I have got to say it changed my opinion on the Iraq War completely. I had always supported it to an extent and often queried why so many people were up in arms about it because it brought down a dictator. But from watching Moore's documentary it would appear the citizens, although fairly miserable under Hussein, were MUCH better off. It was also upsetting to see the lives of both civilians and soldiers lost for no good reason. That said I was uncomfortable at the way the US troops were laughing at their invasion and how they were getting pumped up by listening to music whilst shelling civilian areas. It was also interesting to note how most of the soldiers fighting on the frontline came from poor backgrounds and it really says something about class; how the poorest are willing to give up their lives to protect the wealthy's freedoms... I guess that's just how it is; they don't have as much to lose as the wealthy in material terms but that's the only difference.

I am curious to hear other peoples' opinions on Bush.

It seems to me that the foreign policy which Bush started was a move in the right direction, from appeasing evil regimes to actively fighting them (although this didn't extend to the Saudi regime, for economic reasons I suppose). I cannot understand why any genuine liberal would have opposed the Iraq war in 2003 on ideological grounds, unless they possessed a crystal ball which told them that Iraqis are incapable of being free. Whenever I hear somebody claim that the Iraq war was "illegal", my reaction is "so what?" If it's illegal under international law to get rid of a genocidal regime, international law is a joke. What I would say is that what came after the initial invasion was a disaster; they failed to promote a liberal democratic society and allowed jihadis and mindless totalitarians to take over the country. Obviously the people mainly responsible for this are the jihadis though.

I agree with this tbh. I am a supporter of a strong foreign policy and defence, this doc was made by a liberal documentarian (Michael Moore) so my view may have been skewed substantially. The implementation of "democracy" was a big failure as you have said. Aside from Iraq, from Bush's other policies what's your view?

I'm not a fan of Bush domestically at all. He failed to do anything about climate change, he is a creationist (probably), and a social conservative (opposed gay marriage for instance).

White version of Obama.

It seems to me that the foreign policy which Bush started was a move in the right direction, from appeasing evil regimes to actively fighting them (although this didn't extend to the Saudi regime, for economic reasons I suppose). I cannot understand why any genuine liberal would have opposed the Iraq war in 2003 on ideological grounds, unless they possessed a crystal ball which told them that Iraqis are incapable of being free. Whenever I hear somebody claim that the Iraq war was "illegal", my reaction is "so what?" If it's illegal under international law to get rid of a genocidal regime, international law is a joke. What I would say is that what came after the initial invasion was a disaster; they failed to promote a liberal democratic society and allowed jihadis and mindless totalitarians to take over the country. Obviously the people mainly responsible for this are the jihadis though.

Bush was simply another U.S. President who should be punished for war crimes. He actually ran on an isolationist ticket in 2000, but after the September 11th attacks, that all changed. There was nothing particularly unique about him - Clinton before him had illegally bombed Kosovo and was not held to account for the bombing of a Sudanese pharamceutical plant; Bush senior had invaded Panama; Reagan had illegally funded terrorists in Nicaragua, and so on.

Bush also brought in what's nicknamed 'The Hague Invasion Act', which allows the U.S. to invade the Netherlands if any American serviceman is put on trial at the International Criminal Court. It just shows his contempt for international law.



No, Bush did not start any such foreign policy. He still appeased actively supported evil regimes from Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Tunisia; the former was mentioned in your post, and you accurately deduced the reason for this - economic reasons. However, it is curious that you shrug it off - economic reasons do not justify a hypocritical foreign policy. In actual fact, though, it's not a hypocritical foreign policy, but I will get to that in a moment.

It is not really a "claim" that the Iraq War is illegal - it's pretty much a solid fact. Indeed, the use of force by a state is prohibited by Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter, the only exceptions to which can come only after Security Council authorisation under Chapter VII (which was not obtained) or in self-defence against an armed attack by another state according to Article 51 (Iraq never attacked the United States or the United Kingdom). As Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General at the time said on September 16th 2004: "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."

You say that it must be international law that is flawed if it does not permit the United States to do, essentially, whatever it wants. That's the whole point of international law, however - to stop countries from doing whatever they want. You also start from a false standpoint - the United States never intended to effect regime change in Iraq because the regime was "genocidal" - in fact, the U.S. supported and defended Saddam Hussein while he was gassing Iranians and Kurds in the 1980s.

The real reason why the United States wanted to invade Iraq was because of oil, most likely to drive oil prices up which benefitted American oil companies with whom many of the neoconservatives in the Bush Administration, including Dick Cheney, had worked before. That the war was largely about oil was admitted by numerous government and military officials - General John Abizaid, former commander of CENTCOM with responsibility for Iraq said, “of course it’s about oil, we can’t really deny that”, while Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel said this in 2007: "People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are.” To round it off, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan added in his 2007 book: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

This is precisely why the United States was willing to get to tremendous lengths to convince the public that they should go to war. The original official pretext for the war, remember, was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Were any of these weapons found? No, the allegations of WMD were based on wishful thinking, misinterpretation and, of course, lies. Another pretext put forward by members of the Bush Administration was that Iraq was guilty of aiding and abetting Al-Qaeda. Again, no meaningful connection was found between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. After these blatant lies and distortions perpetrated by the government, they fell back on the pretext of “humanitarian intervention”, which many indeed fell for - people, including myself, once supported the war because we fell for the notion that it was humanitarian in nature.

In actual fact, the war was a product of US imperialism. And, this goes back to why international law is important - it stops, or should stop, countries from invading countries whenever they feel like it. Sure, a by-product of the invasion could have been that the Iraqis were freed from the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein, but the truth is that the United States did not care about the threat to the people of Iraq or the security threat of invading Iraq, because all Bush cared about was the oil. This is why hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed due to the Iraq War, and why the International Institute for Strategic Studies, for example, concluded that the invasion “galvanized” Al-Qaeda and “perversely inspired insurgent violence” there. Of course, one of the main factors contributing to this galvanization is that the thousands of innocent civilians killed provide a pretext for jihadist activities. This has, in turn, increased sectarian violence within Iraq, forcing more than half of the Iraqi Christians to flee the country.

And, the sectarian violence and the galvanisation of jihadism was predicted by the CIA before the invasion, ergo it's not as if the US could not have prevented it, by staying out of Iraq.

So, no, Bush's foreign policy was not hypocritical - it was consistent. Support countries, no matter how oppressive or evil, which benefit the US financially, and invade or put sanctions on countries which do not. This has been the U.S. policy for longer than any of us have been alive, though. It has actually been openly admitted by the United States. For example, "access to strategic resources... combined with" the United States' "desire for foreign citizens to freely express themselves democratically, will not always align", according to the United States' own National Security Strategy of 2013. Indeed, during the Arab Spring, the U.S. was concerned "that [it had] lost long-standing partners in Hosni Mubarak and Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali", the harsh dictators who tortured thousands of political prisoners and curbed press freedoms. The United States still wishes for the Middle East to be "stable", meaning that it will allow the U.S. unlimited access to resources, and is wary of "conservative Islamist parties".

x

I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 for the first time over the weekend and I have got to say it changed my opinion on the Iraq War completely. I had always supported it to an extent and often queried why so many people were up in arms about it because it brought down a dictator. But from watching Moore's documentary it would appear the citizens, although fairly miserable under Hussein, were MUCH better off. It was also upsetting to see the lives of both civilians and soldiers lost for no good reason. That said I was uncomfortable at the way the US troops were laughing at their invasion and how they were getting pumped up by listening to music whilst shelling civilian areas. It was also interesting to note how most of the soldiers fighting on the frontline came from poor backgrounds and it really says something about class; how the poorest are willing to give up their lives to protect the wealthy's freedoms... I guess that's just how it is; they don't have as much to lose as the wealthy in material terms but that's the only difference.

I am curious to hear other peoples' opinions on Bush.

but nevertheless I do think the disappearance of the Ba'athist regime and the hanging of Saddam Hussein were good things for the world. The "crime" of invading a state like Ba'athist Iraq is far, far outweighed by the crime of the existence of such a state. I also believe that if the US had won the Vietnam war, Vietnam would now be a much better place than it currently is (I mean, look at South Korea, where the US did win). Similarly, if the US had handled the situation better, Iraq may have turned out to be a stable democracy by now. Remember, it wasn't the US who started the bloodbaths of 2006 onwards, and despite your claim that they knew they would happen, I don't think that was anybody's stated reason for their opposition to the war originally.

The thing about judging foreign policy (and all government decisions, in fact) is that you have to look at their effects, rather than the motives behind them. Good intentions don't always yield good results; democracy is often about getting the wrong people to do the right things for the wrong reasons. In my view, defeating evil regimes should be a goal for humanity, and who does it and for what reason is beside the point.

Where I would possibly agree with you, but with a heavy heart, is that the removal of Saddam did encourage the growth of jihadism. This is a very pessimistic view, because it means that Iraqis are condemned to live under tyrannical rule, lest a power vacuum be created. It is also essentially a put-down of the Iraqi people, saying they are incapable of maintaining a free society. I don't want to believe this.

Unfortunately, the effects are often the result of the motives behind them. Had the United States been concerned about the people of Iraq, they would have done more to protect them. Instead, they got what they went there for and left it in ruins. It's incredibly dangerous to simply allow states to go against international law and do whatever they want.

The overthrow of the regime in Iraq was a good thing, but, if you want to look at effects, this is outweighed by the fact that 600,000 people were killed and that millions more had to flee. Without the Iraq War, the Iraqi people would be better off now, as much as it pains me to say that.

You also mention the Vietnam War, and if we're to engage in hypotheticals, Vietnam would have been better off had the United States not engaged in its illegal war of aggression against the Vietnamese people in the first place and allowed democracy to flourish in Vietnam. Recall that the United States installed a brutal dictator in South Vietnam because they knew that Ho Chi Minh would have won around 80% of the vote had there been a democratic election. Then, when the Vietnamese people revolted, the United States crushed millions of them with brutal force.

Obviously it is terrible that so many people died, but in the majority of cases it was at the hands of the insurgency, not the coalition forces. A few coalition forces did commit some terrible crimes, but the soldiers involved were always court-martialed and jailed if found guilty (and their crimes, though awful, were never on a scale similar to those of the insurgency). I guess what I'm trying to say is that the responsibility for most of those deaths is with the insurgency, and to blame the invasion force is more than a little unfair. It is as if the invaders were the only ones with any kind of moral responsibility for their actions.

Again, regarding the Vietnam war, I don't think it makes much sense to call it an illegal war. The opposition to French colonial rule was never democratic. Popular support is a necessary but insufficient condition for democracy - Ho Chi Minh was a radical communist, not a democrat by any reasonable standard. I don't know how you can say with a straight face that Vietnam would have been better off had the Americans never invaded, given that (a) the Viet Cong committed atrocities at least as bad as the worst of what the Americans and South Vietnamese did, and (b) in neighbouring Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge (allied with North Vietnam) committed one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, wiping out a sizeable proportion of the population. (Or did they do that because they were angry with Nixon or something? That was after the Americans left as well! ). Sure, dropping agent orange and backing dictators were bad things, but to say that there would have been some glorious democratic revolution is to ignore reality. It would have been a small version of Stalin's Russia or Mao's China.

It seems to me that the foreign policy which Bush started was a move in the right direction, from appeasing evil regimes to actively fighting them (although this didn't extend to the Saudi regime, for economic reasons I suppose). I cannot understand why any genuine liberal would have opposed the Iraq war in 2003 on ideological grounds, unless they possessed a crystal ball which told them that Iraqis are incapable of being free. Whenever I hear somebody claim that the Iraq war was "illegal", my reaction is "so what?" If it's illegal under international law to get rid of a genocidal regime, international law is a joke. What I would say is that what came after the initial invasion was a disaster; they failed to promote a liberal democratic society and allowed jihadis and mindless totalitarians to take over the country. Obviously the people mainly responsible for this are the jihadis though.