It is a true sign of statesmanship to know when his policies are failing and take corrective steps. George Bush and his ally Tony Blair took their countries into a disastrous war in Iraq after having fudged the data to make a case for the war, ruined a fairly peaceful and stable country and inflicted death on at least 650,000 Iraqis and to top it all stand by idly when a sectarian civil war is tearing the country apart. George Bush would now understand how difficult it must have been to govern Iraq in the past and with the unleashing on the sectarian strife, the political future of Iraq does not seem too bright.
The US is now encouraging the Kurds in the north to assert themselves in much the same way that in the early days of the invasion they fanned the fires if Shiaa Identity politics. With every passing day violence has begun to engulf the northern part of Iraq and the USA seems to want a Kurdish state there. Once again it is certainly not in the interest of the USA to install a Kurdish state as it will exert a baleful influence on the politics of Turkey and the Kurds in Turkey will be encouraged. It appears that the USA wants fire and death in the region and is clearly sending out a message that any group will real or imagined grievances with the existing regimes will receive the patronage of the USA.
The destabilization of Somalia has already led to large scale violence and the horn of Africa is now a conundrum of Islamic nationalists, Al Qaeda Terrorists, war lords and criminals. In Afghanistan the War on Terror has denigrated into a full scale attack on the civilians and just yesterday 21 innocent men and children were killed in a NATO raid launched predictably from air.
The Bush policies have led to the growth of al Qaeda in parts of the world in which there was no trace of that Islamic organisation like Iraq, has undermined prospects of peace and stability in the region, alienated large sections of the non-white world, and has made the world a whole lot less secure. This will be the legacy of Bush and Blair.
During the course of the last two months the insurgency has become extremely sophisticated and even ther US counter insurgency tsar in Iraq Gen Petraeus has admitted that the US military has no response at all to the innovative use of IEDs made by the militias. It is now widely recognised by all that the militancy is sustained by homegrown militants with little,if any, support from outside. The US establishment is blind to the fact that the triumph of the Iraqi militants in Iraq is as much against the interests of the powers of the region as it is against the US interests. Yet US policy has failed to tap into that potential source for squelching the insurgency.
The Democrats have begun to assert their majority in Congress but with the use of the presidential veto there is the fear that the house democtrats are only playing to the gallery: willing to strike but not hurt.