Dec. 23, 2006
 
COMMENTARY: History Probably Won’t Treat Bush Years Very Kindly; Future Historians May be Puzzled by Stubborn Course of Iraq War
 
By Nick Patler
 
Staunton, VA (Special to HNN) -- President Bush, via Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has stubbornly rejected the Iraq Study Group's recommendation that the U.S. open talks with Iran and Syria. While the administration does seem interested in tweaking its strategy in Iraq, it is nevertheless bent on staying the course there, keeping its enemies its enemies, and ignoring the striking consensus that the war has been a tragedy.
 
Eerily reminiscent of Vietnam, Bush also wants to escalate U.S. troop presence in a region that is torn by violent civil strife and guerrilla warfare.
 
Setting aside the fact that the U.S. military occupation in Iraq has fueled the brutal clash between the Sunnis and Shiites, has prolonged a toxic war between the insurgents and troops and has cost so many lives, why is the president not taking more seriously the recent writing on the wall?
 
From the open protest of military leaders, to the repudiation of his war policy in the November 2006 mid-term elections, to the dark shadow cast by the Iraqi report, to recent polls that show most Americans believe the war was a mistake and support some form of troop withdrawal, the writing on the wall could not be clearer if it was on a neon billboard blinking in front of the White House.
 
The president's excuse is that "the stakes are too high and the consequences too grave" to seriously revise his policy. This may seem on the surface to mean that Iraq and perhaps the Middle East would collapse into utter chaos if the U.S. began a speedy withdrawal. The main reason, unfortunately, is that it is precisely the fact that this war is almost universally recognized as a failure and mistake that this administration will hold on at all cost. The stakes and consequences the president ambiguously makes reference to are less a concern for the people living in Iraq and the surrounding region than to U.S. prestige and this administration's legacy.
 
Iraq is now much more than a contemporary war. It is a large part of how the Bush administration will be defined in the history books. With only two years left, and President Bush's concern over how future generations will perceive his presidency, leaving Iraq would be admitting dismal failure for an administration that has banked practically its entire reputation on its dogmatic war policy. If he stays and gives the façade of being in control, increasing military forces (hoping that might finally makes right), there is still a slim chance, in his mind, that things will take a more favorable turn for his legacy.
 
Sadly, many more American and Iraqi lives will be lost, children maimed, traumatized and orphaned (UNICEF estimates that half the population of Iraq is below the age of 18), communities destabilized, and life support systems destroyed, all in an attempt to grab glory and prestige.
 
Although President Bush believes that he will be vindicated by history, as reported recently by several news sources, many future historians, I believe, may see his administration as a regrettable period in American politics and world affairs — a time when fear politics prevailed and the U.S misused its power and resources to manipulate, divide and conquer instead of uplifting and prospering others.
 
Historians sifting through declassified documents and other sources will see more clearly than we do today the misinformation and deceit that frightened many people into acquiescing to the war in Iraq and will perhaps come to agree with Republican Sen. Gordon Smith's unanticipated shocker last week that the war "may be criminal."
 
Many will probably shake their heads at a Congress that united behind a president in support of a detainee bill that not only gave leeway to utterly deny civil and human rights to whomever the government decided to imprison, but one that also included a little-noticed retroactive clause in which the U.S. government essentially admitted to torturing human beings (after brazenly denying it to the world).
 
They may even draw parallels to the Sen. Joseph McCarthy era in which people were ruined for not thinking like the status quo, whether true or not. Here historians may point out a similar heightened sense of paranoia 50 years later of Muslim (or Arabic-looking) cab divers and air travelers who prayed and chanted, or looked like they could. And they may sigh at the anti-Mexican sentiment whipped up by leaders and self-proclaimed defenders of the middle class using the media as a bully pulpit to create fear.
 
Maybe future historians will consider it shameful and immoral that we could spend $120 billion in just one year alone on a meticulously organized and unjust war, yet we became totally frazzled and stymied when it came to helping those suffering, mostly lower-income black Americans, from one of the worst natural catastrophes to hit the U.S. called Hurricane Katrina. And perhaps they will note with remorse how much brainpower and resources were wasted on developing sophisticated weapons to destroy (including a devastating subterranean nuclear weapon currently being considered) instead of creative solutions to solving crises like hunger, disease, war, genocide and environmental degradation.
 
If the above plays out, the Bush legacy will not be a good one. But if this does turn out to be the perspective of a future generation, they will have learned from our mistakes.