Washington Post: Family history hounds Jeb Bush on campaign trail
DES MOINES — When Jeb Bush stepped up onto the fabled soapbox at the Iowa State Fair on Friday, fairgoers pelted him with questions about the legacy of his brother, a former president. And his father, another former president. And one of his foreign policy advisers, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the architect of his brother’s war in Iraq. And about the war itself.
Under a blazing sun, Bush expressed irritation with what he called “the parlor game” of focusing on Wolfowitz and other past Bush administration advisers who have resurfaced for this Bush campaign.
“If I’m president, we will have a strategy on Day One to take out this grave threat to our national security and to the world,” he said. “I promise you that.”
WNU Editor: This is going to be a serious (and continuing) problem for Jeb Bush. He needs to come out and have a frank and open discussion on his brother's legacy .... blaming President or Hillary Clinton is not going to accomplish that.
1 comment:
Just started reading the book Fiasco was copyrighted in 2006 before the surge after watching the documentary "Losing Iraq"
The author is critical of many people including Wolfowitz and George H.W. Bush. But so far I have not seen where the author of Fiasco has made his overall point. Wolfowitz does not look like a bad guy.
George H.W. Bush was criticized for not going to Baghdad. I've done it myself. However, it is not entirely clear that the UN resolution would have allowed it. It is less clear if the coalition would have stayed together if the U.S. had moved to Baghdad. George H.W. Bush was also criticized for not taking out the Republican guard. It is another criticism that I have made or would make. Yet. the U.S. came under much opprobrium for the highway of death so would wiping out the Republican Guard have doubled down on that criticism?
My biggest problem with George H.W. Bush was the encouragement of the Shia and then he left them hanging. The author points out or asserts that while people were waving at Americans in Baghdad after the fall, they were not in the vicinity of Basra.
I believe that "you go with the army that you have" is more correct than all the handwringers. The biggest mistake was the de-Baathification. Some of it was necessary, but not the blanket de-Baathification that we did. Yet the way we did it was de Jure. I don't think we studied the occupation of Germany or Japan all that well. IT is a mistake most American including most politicians of either side would have made.
IMHO the 2 biggest mistake in 2003 was the way we implemented de-Baathification and not be allowed to have a launching point from Turkey. We have long since seen Erdogan's true colors.
Post a Comment