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After nine months the president has gone a long way toward defining his foreign policy. Earlier in his term experts and pundits debated over whether Obama was seeking the path of least resistance in foreign policy (so as to focus on domestic policy) or whether he was hopelessly naive (believing he could talk Iran out of nukes and Russia out of its belligerence). But there is really a much simpler, and disturbingly juvenile explanation for this: he’s continuing the “Not Bush” campaign.
Go down the list and it’s a festival of contrarianism. (No, Bush did not manage an effective policy against Iran or North Korea, but he at least resisted any suggestion that we should genuflect before despots.) Perhaps, like the Daily Kos and the Harvard-faculty crowd, Obama has become Bush-obsessed, and simply assumes the key to brilliance in foreign policy involves doing the opposite of whatever Bush did - regardless of the consequences.
Obama is reminding us of the very real achievements and admirable qualities of the Bush foreign policy.
The Bush team kept us safe for seven and a half years after 9-11, which few thought possible. The Bush team liberated tens of millions of Iraqis from a brutal dictator and when the chattering class clamored for retreat, he put war fighting above politics and avoided a horrible defeat. The Bush team stood squarely on the side of democracy advocates and human-rights dissidents. The Bush team fostered fulsome and productive relations with a wide range of nations — from Israel to India to Poland — who came to rely on the president’s word. And that president did not dither or equivocate.
History will render its judgment on the Bush administration, but it’s looking better every day. And much of the credit goes to his successor.
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