Unconventional Wisdom: What Bush Got Right

Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria points out the successful and unacknowledged reversal of much of the wrong-headed foreign policy of the Bush administration's first term.

A broad shift in America's approach to the world is justified and overdue. Bush's basic conception of a "global War on Terror," to take but the most obvious example, has been poorly thought-through, badly implemented, and has produced many unintended costs that will linger for years if not decades. But blanket criticism of Bush misses an important reality. The administration that became the target of so much passion and anger—from Democrats, Republicans, independents, foreigners, Martians, everyone—is not quite the one in place today.

The foreign policies that aroused the greatest anger and opposition were mostly pursued in Bush's first term: the invasion of Iraq, the rejection of treaties, diplomacy and multilateralism. In the past few years, many of these policies have been modified, abandoned or reversed. This has happened without acknowledgment—which is partly what drives critics crazy—and it's often been done surreptitiously. It doesn't reflect a change of heart so much as an admission of failure; the old way simply wasn't working. But for whatever reasons and through whichever path, the foreign policies in place now are more sensible, moderate and mainstream. In many cases the next president should follow rather than reverse them.

Zakaria notes that Bush's determination to blindly follow a policy of "ABC (anything but Clinton)" is "what got us into this mess in the first place." He cautions the next president to select the policies that are in our country's best interest, regardless of their ideological source.

--Ballard Burgher