Though I’ve not liked a lot of what President Bush has done, this statement endears me to him greatly.
“I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process. I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values. And I darn sure wasn’t going to sacrifice those values.”
We conservatives knew what we were getting in George W. Bush – a “compassionate conservative” with no taste for foreign policy. I think that he’s greatly exceeded our expectations. It is largely to him and his values that Fareed Zakaria, no fan of the President’s, could say this yesterday:
My sense is that for the last several years, the core of Al Qaeda—Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri—has been very weak.
The reason that core is weak is because President Bush set our military to two important tasks – hounding al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and drawing them into a fight they could never win in Iraq. In 2000, al-Qaeda was a strong movement with energetic, well-manned, and well-funded cells all over the world. Now it is not. The President’s policies have dried up many of the main sources of Islamist funding, destroyed recruiting networks not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but in many other countries where our diplomatic efforts have borne much fruit, and given Muslims hope that they, too, can enjoy self-determination and freedom.
Even in Iraq, where history will give the President mixed results, his determination to turn the great ship of the Middle East toward liberalism has resulted in something that nearly everyone would have thought impossible just eight years ago.
Iraq’s parliament on Thursday approved a security pact with the United States that paves the way for U.S. forces to withdraw by the end of 2011, taking the country a big step closer to full sovereignty.
The deal, which parliament linked to a series of promised political reforms and a public referendum next year, brings in sight the end of a U.S. military presence that began with the 2003 invasion and ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein.
Iraq is free today, capable of charting its own course in the world by the will of its own people, thanks to President Bush. We will not know fully what positive results will come from that in the region, but it is certain that if Iraq continues on its course, shepherded by its “big brother” on the other side of the world, other Arab nations will be drawn closer to liberty. That, also, will be credited to the vision of George W. Bush.
There will be other ways that history honors our President, but I believe those two will be the biggest. I’m thankful for him and the values he held through eight hard years.
Tags: Afghanistan, Conservatives, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Osama bin Laden, President George Bush, Saddam Hussein
