The WaPo editorializes thus:
Last weekend’s vote, which occurred during one of the calmest periods Iraq has experienced since the U.S. invasion, was a political triumph. Though results are still preliminary, they show that voters strongly rewarded Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for his forceful action against extremist militias and his secular nationalist agenda — and punished religious parties perceived as too sectarian or too close to Iran. The nonsectarian alliance of former prime minister Ayad Allawi also appears to have done well, and nationalist Sunnis gained influence in areas where they had lacked it because of previous election boycotts. In short, Iraq appears to have taken a step toward becoming the moderate Arab democracy that the Bush administration long hoped for.
…
Mr. Maliki’s State of Law ticket appears to have finished first in Baghdad, in the southern port of Basra and in every southern province but one.
It’s perhaps worth stepping back and considering the events of the past six years. We overthrew a virulently hostile police state that played shell games with WMD and was dotted with rape rooms and torture centers, defeated a brutal Al Qaeda-backed insurgency (which both discredited AQ and weakened them), and now appear to have a safe, prosperous, moderate liberalizing democracy developing in the heart of the illiberal Mideast. From the vantage of February 2009, it’s hard not to see the invasion as a strategic masterstroke.
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The great failure of the Bush administration in Iraq was a failure to set expectations and manage those expectations. Sure there were bad decisions and missteps in the course of the endeavor, but anyone who thinks you can mount a massive military and political restructuring effort half a world away from your own infrastructure without running into major problems is an idiot.
Of course, as I’ve noted here many times, this world is full of idiots.
When we initially made the decision to invade Iraq I predicted it would be a ten year effort before we knew the results, and that the real battle would not be in Iraq, where our military would no doubt perform admirably, but in Washington where the anti-Bush and anti-American forces would concentrate their efforts to try to defeat the U.S. effort politically. And they very nearly succeeded.
If we end up with a stable and democratic Iraq which is in control of its own destiny and able to defend itself effectively in the region by 2011 I will consider that to be two years faster than I expected.
As many have noted, if there is any rational, geopolitically aware analysis of the Bush administration’s actual “legacy” in the case of such a success in Iraq will be that Bush confronted a global existential threat to the U.S., changed the dynamic for the better in the middle east and rid the world of two hugely destabilizing regimes whose human rights record was comparable to the worst in human history.
I have many issues with Bush on domestic matters. In terms of foreign policy his strategic vision, his intestinal fortitude, and his willingness to sacrifice political short-term goals to pursue a real chance to improve the world are admirable efforts and he has earned my respect for that alone.
And that doesn’t even address his efforts to bring Africa into the modern age.
Bush will be vindicated. Just as the same crowd called Reagan the “worst President ever” and were proven wrong by history, a similar revision of world opinion of Bush will happen as well.
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