What are your views on american foreign policy throughout the last decade?

Question

can you honestly proclaim that washington did a good job with iraq, afghanistan, and all the other middle eastern countries that they engaged with?

I watched some of the documentary "bush's war" made by pbs's frontlines, and it really brought out the truth of how much of an idiot bush is, and how incapable most of his cabinet was.

Answer 1

Bushes foreign policy has been a disaster .  He lied to start a war .. then alienated our allies who disagreed with him .

   If anything, we should have sent soldiers to Afghanistan to find Osama Bi Laden.  Instead we attacked Iraq , supposedly in search of WMD"S which never existed and the Bush administration knew that .. but still sent our soldiers there to die .

   Our foreign policy is a debacle nothing useful has come of it . Just the alienation of friends and foes alike .

   Our country has also thrown aside the Geneva convention and now allows the torture of assumed U.S. enemies .

  Even our constitutional rights are now in jeopardy .

I honestly believe Bush , Cheney and others in the Bush administration should be tried for war crimes .

  I guess it's obvious , I'm not a Bush fan.

Answer 2

Shortsighted. Bush was ill prepared for a tragedy like 9/11. After that he was pressed to do something by public outcry. That coupled with very poor and pushy advice from his cabinet caused these shortsighted foreign policy choices.

In short, George Jr. is a good man but a poor president. His cabinet made all his decisions for him.

Answer 3

PBS carries some of the most - THE most - politically biased programs out there!   I know because I outed them myself : see http://fsmarchives.org/article.php?id=90...   I know the piece you watched well, and it is full of factual errors.  

I think a lot of people want to see the Middle East question as "good" or "bad".  It isn't black and white as you suggest - Washington has done a commendable job given the tools and information they had at any given time, yes.  

The big problems are 1) that this 'enemy' is different than any other we have ever encountered, and we are learning to deal with them as we go.

2) that in a post-9/11 world we are learning that pre-emptive military action is very important - yet we have hundreds of years of defensive military history, a mindset that is very difficult to get rid of for many members of our government.  Again, we are learning as we go.

3) I think the American public (and this is true of other Western countries as well) is accustomed to defensive warfare (witness Pearl Harbor) and has trouble wrapping their minds around the situation in the world today.  So in frustration and confusion, they Bush-bash.  

My honest views, to answer your question, is that we are in a period in the last decade of huge transition - both in the world political arena and in the way we as a country view our safety.  We have done a lot right, and a few things wrong.  Our government has struggled to do what is most effective - sometimes successfully, sometimes not - and learns to look at the Middle East differently as it goes and learns more.  

To call it "good" or "bad" is just not realistic.  It is - and must be - much more complicated than that, like it or not.