Posted on 02/21/2015 5:12:56 AM PST by HomerBohn
Appearing before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Wednesday, undeclared presidential candidate Jeb Bush (shown) acknowledged “there were mistakes made in Iraq” and insisted he is his "own man,” but otherwise gave no indication he would depart from the practice of intervening militarily around the globe to “enforce peaceful stability” in far-off lands.
“I love my father and my brother," the former Florida governor said of Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush during the question and answer session that followed his prepared remarks. "I admire their service to the nation and the difficult decisions they had to make. But I am my own man — and my views are shaped by my own thinking and own experiences."
Bush did not say whether he considered his brother’s decision to invade Iraq and carry out “regime change” there among the mistakes made during the war many predicted would be quick and easy. U.S. forces battled insurgents there for nearly nine years and left at the end of 2011 with the security of Iraq and the future of its democratic government still very much in doubt. He did note that reports of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction turned out “not to be accurate.”
“Not creating an environment of security after the successful taking-out of Hussein was a mistake, because Iraqis wanted security more than anything else,” Bush said. But he praised his elder brother’s decision to send additional troops in the “surge” of 2007, calling it one of “the most heroic acts of courage politically that any president’s done.” Otherwise he stuck to his previously stated intention to not “re-litigate the past” regarding the last Bush administration and to focus instead on the future. “New circumstances require new approaches,” he said.
Yet his new approaches sound like more of George W. Bush’s “global democratic revolution.” “The United States has an undiminished ability to shape events and build alliances of free people,” he said. “We can project power and enforce peaceful stability in far-off areas of the globe.”
The United States has surely not been bashful about projecting power in the world, but the results in far-off places such as Iraq and Afghanistan seem a far cry from “peaceful stability.” Reviewing the results of military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, Kevin Drum at the left-wing MotherJones.com has concluded: “It's been nothing but disasters since 9/11, and there's no reason at all to think we've learned how to do things better in the intervening years. Bush started big wars, and Obama has started small ones, but the result has been the same.”
Bush blamed Obama for withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq in keeping with the December 2011 deadline set three years earlier by the Status Of Forces Agreement the Baghdad government and the George W. Bush administration. Obama failed to build on the success of the surge and “created the void” now being filled by ISIS and other terrorist groups in the region, Bush said. Despite his determination to not “re-litigate the past,” Democrats are not about to let pass the younger Bush’s defense of his brother’s unpopular war.
“That’s the problem with Jeb Bush,” Mo Elleithee, communications director for the Democratic National Committee said in a statement published Wednesday. “Most Americans believe that if we knew then what we know now, it would have been a mistake to invade Iraq. Jeb Bush, despite what we know now, thinks the only mistake was getting out.”
One place where Bush apparently believes the United States can and should “enforce peaceful stability” is in the nation of Iran. He criticized Obama for not taking a sufficiently hard line in negotiations with the Tehran government over its nuclear program:
Prevention of nuclear weapons in Iran was once a unifying issue with an American foreign policy. Leaders of both parties agreed to it. When he launched his negotiations, President Obama said that was the goal — stop Iran’s nuclear program. Now we’re told the goal has changed and the point of these negotiations isn’t to solve the problem, it’s to manage it.
Like many Republicans and Democrats in Washington, Bush speaks of “nuclear weapons” and “Iran’s nuclear program” as though the two things were synonymous. Warnings of Iran on the verge of producing a nuclear bomb go back at least as far as 1979. Yet two National Intelligence Estimates from all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, in 2007 and again in 2011, said there was no evidence that Iran was developing nuclear weapons. One might reasonably expect a little more caution from one who has acknowledged, however belatedly, that those famous reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq turned out “not to be accurate.”
Mentioning his five trips to Israel, Bush placed himself firmly in the corner of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly called for tougher sanctions, backed by threats of military force against Iran. Bush endorsed House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress on March 3, saying he looks forward to hearing what the Israeli leader has to say. Since the subject will be Iran, it seems unlikely Netanyahu will say anything different from what he has said on previous visits to Washington.
Bush is apt to arouse opposition from privacy advocates and civil libertarians on both the Left and the Right with the blanket endorsement he issued Wednesday of the NSA’s dragnet collection of billions of phone calls and electronic messages sent and received by Americans every day. Bush called that surveillance a “hugely important program” to defend the country from terrorists like those affiliated with the Islamic State, “perhaps the greatest security threat that we now face for our own homeland.”
Bush spoke of “shortfalls in our defense spending,” indicating a desire to increase the Pentagon budget. He inflated the number of extremists fighting for the Islamic State, referring in his prepared remarks to ISIS as “a fighting force of more than 200,000 battle-tested men.” A spokesman later explained Bush meant to say 20,000.
“Taking them out is the strategy,” Bush said during the question and answer session, though he did not say how. He gave no hint as to whether he would support sending U.S. ground forces against the Islamic State.
While any discussion of foreign policy by Jeb Bush is bound to give rise to comparisons with his brother’s administration, it was the first President Bush who got the United States enmeshed in Middle East conflicts with his decisions to station more than half a million U.S. troops on Muslim holy ground in Saudi Arabia and to drive the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. Bush presented the liberation of Kuwait as the beginning of a “new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and the vision of the UN’s founders.”
Jeb Bush, with his boundless optimism about the nation’s “undiminished ability to shape events” and “enforce peaceful stability in far-off areas of the globe” appears ready to expand upon a “new world order” that might more accurately be called a "Bush world chaos."
America's politicians are members of one party.
One party with two heads.
Pat answer...to be repeated ad nauseum from now until....well, whenever.
“Dis” W. all you want to but I would have preferred 8 more years of him than the bastard cur that we got.
That’s true. With the Republicrat party it’s a matter of time or the difference between poison and poison lite.
I believe America has one party with two heads.
Jeb Bush awards Hillary Defender of Liberty Medal on eve of Benghazi anniversary
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) will honor former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with this year’s Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center.
The award will be presented to Clinton on September 10th, the eve of the first anniversary of the terrorist attack on the United States mission in Benghazi that killed four American.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that Bush, a potential GOP contender in the 2016 presidential race, is chairman of the board of trustees of the National Constitution Center located in Philadelphia.
“Former Secretary Clinton has dedicated her life to serving and engaging people across the world in democracy,” Bush said in a statement. “These efforts as a citizen, an activist, and a leader have earned Secretary Clinton this year’s Defender of Liberty Medal.”
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Bush’s decision to honor Clinton, who is considered by some to be a likely Democrat candidate for president in 2016, was condemned by the Independence Hall Tea Party Association of Philadelphia. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the organization released its own statement Monday, referring to the event as “extremely distressing,” and offering, instead, an opportunity for another Liberty Medal recipient.
According to the statement: As all of you undoubtedly know, much of the blame for the Obama Administration’s failure to contain the Benghazi attack and the scandalous handling of its aftermath, can be traced directly to Ms. Clinton.
Indeed, a Congressional investigation regarding Ms. Clinton’s role in the cover-up of the Administration’s failure is still ongoing.
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A newly formed organization, the Independence Hall Foundation, will hold a “What Difference Does It Make” press conference on Independence Mall, September 10, 4 PM, to denounce the selection of Ms. Clinton as the 2013 Liberty Medal recipient and to offer an alternative award (details below). During the conference, the Foundation will name its choice of recipient(s) for the 2013 Defender of Liberty Medal. Dom Giordano will headline the presser and we certainly hope you will consider joining us. (SOURCE: BREITBART.COM 9/9/13)
“Bush is apt to arouse opposition from privacy advocates and civil libertarians on both the Left and the Right with the blanket endorsement he issued Wednesday of the NSA’s dragnet collection of billions of phone calls and electronic messages sent and received by Americans every day. Bush called that surveillance a ‘hugely important program’ to defend the country from terrorists like those affiliated with the Islamic State, ‘perhaps the greatest security threat that we now face for our own homeland.’”
No, thanks, Jebbie. I don’t want to live in a Big Brother state where my own government spies on me just because you and other one-worlder internationalists refuse to keep mohammedans out of our country and then use the specter of domestic terrorism as your excuse for upending the principles of our constitutional republic.
Move to Mexico, Jebbie.
Its not going to fly. Cruz and/or Walker will dispatch this legacy bush baby.
People aren’t really SERIOUS about voting in another Bush are they?????
We have more brains than that, right?????
We can't count on that!
Walker is the real deal!
The Uniparty, with an R division and a D division keeps the people entertained with the dog and pony show of what they perceive to be their free choice in elections.
For the Republic to survive, the GOP must die.
Both parties are on the side of The Cheap Labor Express, there must be a party to represent the citizens.
Or is Walker Plan B for The Cheap Labor Express?
His previous statements about Fraudulently Documented Foreigners do not give me the impression he is on the side of the citizens, the rule of law and American sovereignty.
We MUST elect a President who WILL enforce the laws or we lose our country.
+1
Do you notice that the two "opposing" candidates, who are said to be "inevitable", are both intensely unpopular and share many policy positions that the people hate?
” I don’t want to live in a Big Brother state where my own government spies on me just because you and other one-worlder internationalists refuse to keep mohammedans out of our country and then use the specter of domestic terrorism as your excuse for upending the principles of our constitutional republic.”
Too late.
“We MUST elect a President who WILL enforce the laws or we lose our country.”
The GOP will coerce, lie and spend, so that we don’t have that choice.
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