I don't particularly begrudge the Bush Administration for 9/11, or Obama for Benghazi, pending revelations which could come, because there are people who want to kill us, and they're going to succeed sometimes. we can't be perfect. But the "Bush kept us safe" meme drives me nuts. Almost 3,000 died on his watch, and thousands more Americans died in the war that he chose to start and mismanaged.

So if that's your standard, he failed, certainly compared to Obama.

Also, it isn't true that terrorism in the US stopped between 9/11 and the end of Bush's tenure. The anthrax attacks killed people. The Egyptian dude who shot up the Israeli airline ticket counter killed someone, if memory serves. The Beltway snipers killed people. Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar injured six and could've easily killed someone during his attack by SUV. Naveed Afzal Haq killed someone at the Seattle Jewish Federation. So other terrorists did in fact "reach their targets."

I haven't delved into the Benghazi story, but I am basically convinced that the Obama Administration constantly lies and breaks the law in its behavior abroad, which I write about constantly, so I don't think it's an unwillingness to criticize the president that's stopping me. And sorry if I misread your comment. I just don't think Bush/Cheney were competent at stopping Islamist terrorism, given that they presided over the biggest attack of that sort ever perpetrated, or waging foreign wars, given the mess they made of Iraq and the failure to wrap up Afghanistan before leaving office.

After the World Trade Center was attacked in 1993, and Al Qaeda targeted American troops and interests in several places abroad, I seem to remember a major terrorist attack that happened when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were in office. If memory serves, almost 3,000 Americans died, and the Pentagon was also hit.

It takes chutzpah to preside over that... and then ding President Obama for an attack that killed four people. For all I know, they should've been better protected. But I'd have an easier time hearing criticism from someone other than Cheney. I don't miss him at all. That's because I value the rule of law, and because, unlike DocJay, I don't associate the people in charge during the Iraq War with competence. Quite the opposite.

I appreciate all the comments.

And I'm glad to see that so many agree with me that he is owed the same rights as any criminal defendant. I know that John Yoo and I have very different takes on questions like these -- the Bush Administration had a different take before being reined in by the Supreme Court -- and President Obama still seems to think indefinite detention is Constitutional, even for American citizens arrested within the United States. But if everyone else here is against the Bush-Obama-Yoo position, hurray for that.

DocJay,

Here's the thing about your 50 nukes scenario: it would never happen, but if all of America is literally going to be destroyed by nukes unless we torture a suspect, I guess I can't persuasively argue against it, in the same sense that, if nukes are going to destroy all of us unless we repeal the 2nd Amendment, or kill the oldest child in every German American family, or eat nothing but puppies for the next month, well, it beats a thermonuclear winter that destroys all humanity. Of course, that hypothetical tells us exactly nothing about what our laws should be, or what we should do in the War on Terror.

DocJay,

Let me press you.

We don't know the guy they arrested is in fact guilty -- only that the government suspects him -- but since the crime is sending poison through the mail, it is very possible that there are still lives in danger, since whoever DID do it could've sent letters to any number of other people.

Actually, I see there are conflicting reports, and the one I linked says Paul Kevin Curtis is the suspect's name. Not that it matters for the hypothetical, but if the body entry can be edited so it's correct that would be great.

What has done more damage to our reputation, Larry, leftist rhetoric in the media, or the photographs of Americans abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, drone strikes that inadvertently but undeniably kill innocent people, and the audio of Professor Yoo declaring that the President of the United States may be legally empowered to crush the testicles of a child to elicit information from his father, depending on why he wants to do it? I don't think behavior like that captures America's character, but I do think it explains why our reputation has suffered a lot better than observing that leftists sometimes speak ill of the United States. Bush and Obama have done far more to tarnish our reputation than any private citizen.

I don't know enough about Syria to address that point. Ajami goes on to say, "think of the advantages of having an Iraqi army equipped with American weapons fighting with American doctrine.  They wouldn't have been our client, but they would have distanced themselves from Iran to keep our favor."

Fighting who with what American doctrine? I am unclear about that. But I see no reason to assume that America's continued presence (for how long?) would've guaranteed that whatever weapons we provided would be used to fight for ends approved by us. There is, after all, a long history of America arming people (including Iraqis) only to see those weapons turned to evil uses, or even against America and its interests.

"Our position in the Persian Gulf is essential to the oil traffic and to the stability of the international economy," he concludes. "It doesn't take much conviction to believe that we would have been better served to stay the course in Iraq." This is phrased as if staying at any cost was the prudent choice. My argument is that the cost in lives, dollars and opportunity was far higher than the benefits. 

How good of Fouad Ajami to respond (and thanks to Peter for soliciting the response). He writes that "had we kept the residual presence in Iraq we would have had a listening station on Iran's border." I confess that I don't know what a "listening station" is. We presently have spies inside Iran itself, presumably have access to Israeli intelligence, and conduct our own aerial surveillance. Am I to understand that "listening" from a geographically nearby location proves useful in some additional way?

I'd like to know what it is. It had better be valuable, because while Ajami believes "the Iranians would have had to think things over if we were so close to them and right on their border," whatever "think things over" means, it is indisputably true that American troop presence in Iraq gave Iran the ability to thwart and even kill American troops via proxies, which is why the Iraq Study Group counseled negotiating with Iran (and Syria) back in 2006. Put simply, our presence in Iraq gave Iran more leverage over us than it gave us over them.

To say that the Iraq War was a mistake does not imply that Saddam Hussein and his family were the wronged party. Perhaps there is some opponent of the war somewhere who reasons from that premise. I have never encountered one. The vast majority of war opponents think that the wronged parties are American soldiers who died in combat, innocent Iraqis killed as a result of the war, and American taxpayers, who paid much more than they anticipated for a strategically dubious intervention.

Was that unclear to you?

It is extraordinarily unlikely that the mischief he'd make while being contained would've killed thousands of Americans, injured tens of thousands more, spurred epidemic PTSD and record suicides among combat veterans, cost hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, empowered Shiites in Iran, and created a power vacuum filled by an Al Qaeda offshoot.

You're right, of course, that Saddam and Sons won't be making mischief in Iraq for another generation. but it sure looks like a different strongman is going to be making it. The alternative I suggest is in fact better.

So the "strategic gain" was to create a new branch of Al Qaeda, then achieve victory over it in a way that couldn't be sustained without leaving a substantial occupying force in the country going on a decade after the invasion. Brilliant.

Mark,

In a way, I agree -- that we should've left Afghanistan in 2003, that we'd accomplished what our aims ought to have been -- but the Bush Administration had more ambitious aims, and however foolhardy they may have been under any circumstances, the Iraq Adventure guaranteed that they would fail because their more ambitious aims required more resources.

For the sort of War on Drugs excesses I'm talking about, see here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/raid-of-the-day-the-hay-f_n_2907178.html

I suspect that, when you advocate on behalf of justice and liberty, you don't mean that Republicans should rein in the unjust, unlibertarian excesses of the War on Drugs and War on Terrorism... which is why you'll have a hard time running on those words. Libertarians don't believe you.