You’re not alone – I’ve had the same experience.

Challenging the false narrative is akin to challenging a foundational belief of a social-political worldview that for many people has risen to religion. Admitting Bush was right on Iraq by direct implication says the notions and entities opposed to Bush are wrong, and that’s a mind overhaul they’re not prepared to accept. Their circuit breaker flips before the idea can blow their minds.

What I do is emphasize the demonstrable continuity from Clinton to Bush on Iraq, including Clinton’s initial endorsement of Bush and OIF. I don’t know whether that aspect has changed any minds by itself, but it does give pause since a basic premise of the false narrative is that Bush’s action on Iraq was a new and unique episode.

Still, I believe it’s worth beating the drum. Persistence and repetition make a difference. As activists know, a flowering success today often grows from seeds planted and nurtured for years with much frustration in between. Change takes time … and pressure (Shawshank Redemption).

Any situation in which Obama is vulnerable to criticism for his foreign policy provides an opportunity to conduct a compare/contrast between Obama and Bush that can be used to set the record right on the Iraq mission and rehabilitate Bush’s legacy.

I find myself in broad agreement with your arguments. I worry however that rehabilitating Bush’s legacy and countering the false narrative on the Iraq mission will fail because the appeal of the false narrative is irrational and is not susceptible to evidence and reasoned argument. I worry that Pres. Bush’s greatest failing is that, unlike FDR, Pres. Bush did not use all propaganda tools at hand to vilify and demonize his opponents but instead sought to avoid regression to a binary holy-war by underplaying the role of violence and jihad in normative Islam. Without a propaganda focus for hatred comparable to the Nazis during WWII, I suspect that Pres. Bush himself became vulnerable to being scapegoated and demonized because he was a marginal insider and because Europe’s and America’s progressive elite found Pres. Bush’s evident Christian faith scandalous.

On no few occasion when making similar arguments as you have here and I have found that competent evidence is not admitted nor entertained. Not rarely have I experienced an intense angry absolute rejection of any evidential effort to rehabilitate Pres. Bush’s role in 9/11, the War in Iraq and for that matter in the economic crisis of 2008. I don’t imagine I am alone in this regard.

Several historical examples of enduring unjust demonization come to mind. President Grant was a competent President whose reputation remains unrehabiliated. Martin Luther’s successful demonization of several Popes, decent men and perhaps one a true saint, endures to this day. The contemporary scapegoating of Popes Pius XII and Benedict XVI also comes to mind.

I disagree. Pres Obama is neither a Caesar or a Napoleon, both of whom were superb military commanders and in the end both men were divinized as war-gods. Pres. Obama is an incompetent blunderer who makes Emperor Napoleon III look Bismarckian by comparison.

Perhaps Pres Obama instead is comparable to Byzantine emperor Phocas who was was deposed and executed by Heraclius. If not for Heraclius, Phocas would have been similarly truly transformational.

Yep. George Pal is judging based on direct transactional benefits. There are those, but the US hegemonic role has been more about the community effect. More like NBA or MLB or NFL commissioner, if he was also a franchise owner, looking out for the good of the league and the game rather than strictly personal profit.

At the same time, we *are* a franchise owner competing in the league, and they’re right that we need to look out for our own interests, too. If we don’t have our own house in order, we can’t serve as an effective league commissioner, either.

Thank you all for contributing to an excellent discussion. I printed out Neo’s and C. Glick’s essays and these comment so I could read them with care.

Having read them with care I’d like to offer several observations:

George and Parker:

I wonder whether your assessment of Pax American is fair. Pres Truman’s investment in the defense of Korea and subsequent six decades of US military commitment to Korea in my view has purchased far more for the USA than limited success in South Korea. It purchased time for Japan and Taiwan to maintain independence and to become prosperous and democratic. The Philippines are free and democratic and far more prosperous than we should expect to have been the case if we had demonstrated our commitment to Asia by maintaining our military commitment to South Korea. Even our poorly managed military investment in Vietnam brought time for the post-colonial, post WWII governments, in Indonesia, Malaysia and and Thailand to gain legitimacy and stability. Remember, South Vietnam would have been free, democratic and prosperous today if the Democratic controlled Congress had not over-road Pres. Ford’s veto and defunded our military aid commitment to South Vietnam in January 1975.

Moreover the modest cost of maintaining a 28,500 man US garrison in South Korea is far out weighed by the enormous economic benefits to the USA, to East Asia and to the world that have accrued because of America’s commitment to Korea. In a sense the operative economic term is: “leverage”.

What is economically unsustainable is not PAX American but the New Deal-Great Society European style welfare state whose transfer payment commitments comprise 2012 ‘s $222 trillion fiscal gap.

It was Tony Blair running the show. While he supported Bush light policies for Iraq, he had his own Obama domestic totalitarian plan. But he sounded great to American plebes looking for the aristocratic king to tell them what to do though.

So whatever criticisms Blair ended up with, that got trickled down into Bush’s second term or just ended up on Bush’s table. I’m pretty sure Tony made the same deal Johnson did in Vietnam. In return for the support of his allies, he would “moderate” casualties. If that made the war pointless… well, Obama wasn’t the first one to make war pointless waste of blood and money.

Republicans following Democrat policies due to loyalty to America, perhaps. But the other way around, like LIncoln’s VP? Doubt it.

Did the Brit politicians who made those decisions ever issue a mea culpa, or did they just congratulate themselves on a job well done, and freeze their thinking at “running the smarter operation – not at all like Bush”.

The British employed 0bama logic: they led from behind.

To get along the went along.

To the extent possible, the British politicians (calling the shots) insisted that their soldiers not get drawn into tribal policy disputes. All of the ‘activist’ officers were rotated home, rather promptly.

Active (British Army) policing was prohibited.

The inmates took over the asylum.

You’ve inverted history: it was the few Sunnis that had to run for cover. That went quick. Next, it was time for the Shia factions to have a go. It was the local boys versus the Iranian backed crews. Since they were buying — in major quantity — the diverted/ stolen oil, the Iranian crews were sitting on a pile of cash — and weapons.

They didn’t get turfed out until Maliki’s campaign — after the British were gone. Only after that did it become flamingly obvious just how badly London had been directing matters.

For London, the ONLY thing that mattered was zero casualties. The mission be damned.

But, if that was the case, why even pretend? Departure was long overdue.

Until Maliki showed them fools, the British politicians felt that THEY were running the smarter operation — not at all like Bush.

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Alliances CAN’T be made without trust. Such fakes were last seen with Hitler and Napoleon. They were self-frauds. Every time the pressure was on, their allies would bail out, no exceptions.

Alliances work when you don’t depend upon them: NATO.

It’s strictly a one-way flow.