President Bush – Interview

Bush On His Record, (Wall Street Journal)…Kimberley A. Strassel, Dec 20, 2008, pg.13

As he sits at his mile-high desk, clad in his Air Force One crew jacket, George W. Bush is as he has ever been: upbeat, focused, confident in his past decisions and in the future.

On Iraq …

The action that will always most define the Bush presidency will be the invasion of Iraq. It is also the decision he remains most visibly passionate about, especially given it was the cornerstone of his broader “freedom agenda” in the Middle East. That agenda, he says, is working, and he remains confident that while it “was widely criticized by some as being hopelessly naïve and idealistic, is really the only practical way to provide long-term security . . .” He is convinced the region is stepping into a new era, and will continue on that path “unless America loses nerve in our belief in the universality of freedom.”

Would it have been easier to just replace Saddam with another strongman? “Early on, I knew we were in an ideological conflict, and you don’t win ideological conflicts by replacing one strongman with another. . . . And frankly, that’s been a big shift in our foreign policy in the Middle East, which is — and this is not a criticism of anybody, it’s a recognition that presidents deal with the realities of the situation. But in the Cold War, to prevent communism from taking root in the Middle East, we promoted stability. Well, it just so happens that over time people became so resentful and so hateful that they were swayed by a group of very smart and very capable ideologues to become their foot soldiers.”

On the home front:

He also counts as an accomplishment his protection of the homeland, in particular that he is “leaving behind tools that future presidents will be able to use — and even though they were controversial when they were implemented, people are going to get in that Oval Office and say, now I understand why this tool is important.”