Is Bush the Worst President in the Last 50 Years?
In Debate Over Bush Legacy, Karl Rove Defends Old Boss but Contradicts Him on WMD
War on Terror
Despite the financial crisis, which this week was officially dubbed a recession, the debate focused primarily on the biggest issue of Bush's presidency -- the execution of the Iraq War and the administration's pursuit of terrorists.
The liberals who argued that Bush was indeed the worst president, namely journalists Jacob Weisberg and Simon Jenkins, described the war as a protracted failure, a quagmire built on the lie of weapons of mass destruction, the execution of which alienated our allies and instilled an anti-American fervor in a new generation of young Muslims.
"It simply has been a catastrophe," said Jenkins, a columnist for the British newspaper the Guardian. "The occupation of Iraq is simply the most incompetent thing I have ever seen. Iraq is fairly simple to end, you just leave. ... I cannot accept that it is, in any sense of the word, 'a success.'"
Those defending the president -- Rove and conservative columnist Bill Kristol, who is also editor of The Weekly Standard -- argued that Bush took the fight against Islamic terrorism overseas, creating a fragile but stable democracy in the heart of the Middle East and preventing a single terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.
"I think Karl is right, that the president would not have gone to war if -- what seems to be the case -- that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction programs at the time," said Kristol.
"Having said that ... I think it was right to go to war. The Middle East would be much more dangerous if he were still in power. Every radical state and every radical group would be empowered. ... We would have a much more resurgent radicalism in the Muslim world than we have today where it's much more of a mixed bag. And I think many of the terror groups are on the defensive and on the run."
In addition to the mismanagement of the Iraq War, Jacob Weisberg, chairman and editor in chief of the Slate group, a unit of the Washington Post Co., listed the restriction of civil rights, including the right of habeus corpus for enemy combatants, sacrificing American unity after 9/11 and the economic crisis as among Bush's worst offenses.
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