"There Will Be No Illusion About the Kind of Foreign Policy He Would Conduct If He Were Elected President"

"Bush’s story about the 'surge' isn’t surprising, but it is false and dangerously misleading. He celebrates the 'surge' without qualification as a 'success' and declares it a turning point, but both claims are untrue. As I said earlier, the 'surge' failed on its own terms, but more than that it means that the U.S. recommitted to a disastrous war at a time when the public had already expressed their overwhelming opposition to continuing the war. George W. Bush's admirers cheer his decision to escalate the war as a 'courageous' act because of the unpopularity of the war at that point, but it was really the most predictable and self-serving attempt to make the best out of an utter debacle. It isn't just that the 'surge' turned out to be unsuccessful according to the Bush administration’s own standards, but that it represented the worst instincts of our political class to escalate a lost war instead of cutting our losses much earlier. The fact that Jeb Bush sees this as an exemplary moment in recent history tells us all we need to know about his foreign policy judgment."


Daniel Larison at The American Conservative reacts to Jeb Bush's speech at the Ronald Reagan Library.