A World Less Safe

The New York Times has reported some details from a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)created by individuals within the government's intelligence agencies that confirms what I have believed and argued about Iraq from the very beginning: President Bush's decision to invade Iraq has made us less safe rather than more safe.

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

[The report] asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastisized and spread across the globe.

The report 'says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,' said one American intelligence official.

All of this is in direct contradiction to statements from the White House about the war in Iraq and about how they have 'degraded' al-Qaeda.

When added to the recent dishonesty regarding the use of torture, the terms 'credibility' and 'Bush Administration' have become completely incompatible.

I do not see any credible argument to challenge the notion that the Bush Administration has been anything short of a disaster in terms of American foreign policy. The evidence is coming in too clearly. Our nation's reputation has been severly damaged. Our security has been compromised.

President Bush has presided over a government which has condoned torture as a tactic to 'protect your family,' and now this NIE has made it clear that not only has he failed to do that, he has actually heightened the risk we face by providing radical Islamist with the greatest recruitment tool they could ever hope for. With his incomplete effort to deal with a terrorist state in Afghanistan (read this article which describes a resurgent Taliban) and his failure in Iraq- not a failure of execution, but a complete failure in policy- we now are in a more hazardous world than we were in 5 years ago, and one where not only is the Taliban resurgent in Afghanistan, but Iraq has become the new Afghanistan.

We must endure two more years of this sort of devastating decision making. And as a history teacher, I will be forced to relive it for decades. A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly said that the true measure of how bad a president has been is how long it takes to recover from his mistakes. I fear we have a long, slow, and perhaps painful recovery ahead of us.

GP