Krauthammer’s Fantasy World

Mr. Charles Krauthammer, in his piece, “History Will Judge” (Newsday, Opinion, 09-19-08) attempts a restoration of Mr. G.W. Bush’s reputation with a revision of history which might be characterized as absurd and laughable, if the events were not so frightening and such a revision were not so dangerous for the future of our Nation. The piece is only more irritating in that it appears at a time when we are faced with President Bush hiding in the White House as the economic disaster of Wall Street (which his deregulation efforts helped to spawn) swirls around us all like the veritable winds of Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Kraithammer, again erroneously conflates, Mr. Bush’s disastrous preemptive attack on Iraq with the 9-11 tragedy, and goes on to make a preposterous comparison between past US Presidents who were forced by tragic events into war (Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt) and Mr. Bush, who mis-led his Nation into an infamous preemptive attack on Iraq (the first in our history), inflated threats which he knew were false, and then disastrously mismanaged the conflict so that as he leaves office his country remains struggling to clean up the mess (the longest war in our history) he created. Mr. Krauthammer’s only point of defense for this president is the so-called “surge”, an expansion of in-theater military forces which Mr. Bush finally agreed to when there was no other choice. The “surge-was-a-success” argument favored by Republicans reminds me of the surgeon who, revealed to have operated on the wrong patient, looks closely at the ghastly wound, and with “calm and confidence” points to his neat and orderly sutures and pronounces his disastrous error a “successful operation”. Unfortunately, for Krauthammer’s thesis, Mr. Bush’s display of “calm and confidence” is just another example, among many, of Mr. Bush’s appalling errors in judgment.