Bush knows well his legacy is tied to results in Iraq

By Chris Masters

Joan King loses all credibility as a political commentator when she asserts this: “President Bush wants to pass the war on to his successor. If he can’t claim success in Iraq, at least the failure can be attributed to someone else.”

Here is a simple truth for our times: President Bush cannot escape responsibility for the war, whether it be blame or credit. His reputation and legacy are tangled inextricably in the war. He is well aware of that. When Ms. King asserts that he aims to disentangle himself from it, she shows us how thin her analysis is in matters related to the war and larger questions of national security.

As has so often happened in our history, this president might be treated kinder by history than by many of his contemporaries. A few more decades into what Norman Podhoretz and others call “World War IV,” the president could well be praised for understanding the nature and determination of the enemy we face, and for standing fast against shortsighted people who refuse to understand that Islamic jihadists are the enemy because their aim is to destroy America.

In suggesting that the president is continuing the war for his own benefit, Ms. King impugns his motives. In fact, he wants America to live up to its responsibility to the Iraqis and to continue the war on terror.

Even Ms. King says, “We can’t honorably abandon Iraqis who have worked for us at considerable risk to themselves and their families,” though she adds, “but we can make it very clear to Iraq (and the world) that WE WILL LEAVE!”

Yet even as she says “we cannot honorably abandon Iraqis,” she attributes only a self-serving motive to the president for continuing to fight there. But then, Ms. King is an honorable woman.

Our honor is indeed at stake. The larger stakes for America are made clear in Podhoretz’s “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism.”

Chris Masters, Gainesville
Chris Masters is the Vice Chairman of Operations for the Hall County Republican Party

Originally published in The Gainesville Times on Monday, October 8, 2007

Thanks Chris for the letter and The Gainesville Times for publishing it.  Frankly I think that Joan King’s only justification for her position is that she has one.  In a country of one, she presides as its queen.  Hope the rest of us don’t get shipwrecked there.