Here’s Fareed Zakaria, writing in the Washington Post today about the line we keep hearing that “at least Bush kept us safe”:
That has become the mantra to explain why George W. Bush — contrary to the view of the American public, people abroad and historians — is actually a great man. . . .And his chief piece of evidence for this claim is, of course, that “he has kept us safe.”
Let me first acknowledge that the administration’s policies for weakening al-Qaeda, like those of dozens of other countries, have been intelligent and effective. But “keeping us safe” is still a twisted way to judge a presidency. . . .
Bush’s claim that he kept us safe is mostly true. I say mostly because, of course, he did not keep the United States safe on Sept. 11, 2001, nine months into his presidency. And while it’s not right to blame Bush for that day, there is certainly evidence that the administration ignored some serious warnings about al-Qaeda, seeing it as an unimportant “nonstate” actor. The administration’s focus from the start was on the rogue states — Iraq, Iran, North Korea and others.
But certainly, post-Sept. 11, Bush has kept us safe. Just as Jacques Chirac kept France safe and Gerhard Schroeder kept Germany safe. Tony Blair, alas, failed this test. He did not keep Britain safe despite tough policies, an impressive set of counterterrorism agencies and much hard work. My point is that it may not tell us much that a leader presided over a period with no terrorist attacks.
Everyone who follows football knows that there are games the quarterback wins for you, and that there are games you win despite the quarterback. We don’t know enough to say that what Bush did kept us safe. We don’t really know what was out there. We don’t know that what Bush did would have been any different than any other president would have done. And we surely don’t know if a different approach would have kept us safer. All we know is that we weren’t attacked. Good. Thank God. If Bush was so indispensible to this effort, why are we letting him go?
To read the rest of Zakaria’s hard-headed, unsentimental, well-argued article, click here: He Kept Us Safe, but….