Ending an Era

So the Bush Presidency is over. I'm one of those people that thinks history will be kind to him. I'll share one reason: Iraq.

William McGurn writes in today's Wall Street Journal that the most infuriating thing George Bush could have done before leaving office was to turn Iraq into a success.

Here in the afterglow of the turnaround led by Gen. David Petraeus, it's easy to forget what the smart set was saying two years ago -- and how categorical they all were in their certainty. The president was a simpleton, it was agreed. Didn't he know that Iraq was a civil war, and the only answer was to get out as fast as we could?
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- the man who will be sworn in as vice president today -- didn't limit himself to his own opinion. Days before the president announced the surge, Joe Biden suggested to the Washington Post he knew the president's people had also concluded the war was lost. They were, he said, just trying to "keep it from totally collapsing" until they could "hand it off to the next guy."

The most important thing is that Iraq is headed on a good trajectory. I think it will continue down that path.

I'm ready for the Bush years to be over, but I am one who does not think them a failure, and I wanted to get on the record with that sentiment.