Re: DiamondDave
Hard to argue that he was not a man of good intentions... indeed he was.. and in many areas, still is (misguided as he may be on reality)... but a horrible, HORRIBLE president in most every aspect of the job.... while I have much to gripe about with the likes of GWB and the bad I think he did in terms of government spending, domestic policy, etc... he did excel in a crisis and did pretty darn good in foreign affairs... not that I am saying GWB was a 'good' President, mind you
This is where you and I have polar opposite positions. I think George W. Bush was the worst foreign affairs President in our nation's history, bar none. He started an unjustified war. That War cost us $3 trillion, about 4000 servicemen, 10s of 1000s injured. 100s of 1000s of innocent Iraqis.
But, in the bigger picture, we lost credibility as the leader of the free world. We can't get it back. We took the sovereignty of another country because we felt like it. That is a principle that our country has fought to protect for others. We've never done that before and never should have.
W., Cheney, and others got the wrong message from Reagan here "The Shining City Upon a Hill":
"We are not a warlike people. Nor is our history filled with tales of aggressive adventures and imperialism, which might come as a shock to some of the placard painters in our modern demonstrations. The lesson of Vietnam, I think, should be that never again will young Americans be asked to fight and possibly die for a cause unless that cause is so meaningful that we, as a nation, pledge our full resources to achieve victory as quickly as possible.
I realize that such a pronouncement, of course, would possibly be laying one open to the charge of warmongering -- but that would also be ridiculous. My generation has paid a higher price and has fought harder for freedom that any generation that had ever lived. We have known four wars in a single lifetime. All were horrible, all could have been avoided if at a particular moment in time we had made it plain that we subscribed to the words of John Stuart Mill when he said that “war is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.”
The message should not have been go to War with anyone you feel like. The rest of the World no longer trusts us and in many ways no longer looks at us as "The Shining City Upon a Hill". If we're willing to take the sovereignty of another country, why aren't they next?
In the past, whether it be Iraq and Kuwait, North and South Vietnam, North and South Korea, Germany and other countries, etc., we'd jump in, sometimes late, but as the ally to the invaded to protect the sovereignty of a people.
Bush's choice to take another country's sovereignty without justification is something the rest of the world will never forget. It will have long term, long reaching consequences. As much as I'm not a fan of Reagan, he would not have invaded Iraq.