Watch All Shows Victor Davis Hanson Tony Kinnett Daily Signal Signal Sitdown

Watch All Shows Victor Davis Hanson Tony Kinnett Daily Signal Signal Sitdown

Home – Political News – Victor Davis Hanson: Was George W. Bush Treated Unfairly?

Victor Davis Hanson: Was George W. Bush Treated Unfairly?

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Victor Davis Hanson: If you look at George W. Bush, people—his reputation has gone up a little bit because he broke with [Donald] Trump, the next Republican. I’m not sure he voted for Trump, and he made his peace with [Barack] Obama.  

There were three things that people fault Bush for. I’m not sure he was responsible. No. 1 was the Iraq War. No. 2 was the Afghan War. No. 3 was the 2008 financial meltdown. I think he was the most conservative Republican president that we have had since forever. 

He was much more conservative than his father, George H.W. Bush. He tried to do a lot of things. I think part of the problem was they thought they could deal with the Democrats. So, they did things like prescription-drug entitlement and things in education that didn’t work out. But they thought that the Left would appreciate that magnanimity, and they interpreted that as weakness. 

So, when you look at Iraq, on the plus side of the ledger, after 9/11, we were told that they were going to blow up airliners, 10 or 11 of them, in the Philippines. We uncovered a lot of al-Qaeda plots, and there were a lot of foiled efforts. And for all the false WMD narratives about Saddam [Hussein], we really never knew what happened to the WMDs. 

We knew he had them, and they might have gone to Syria because we know they were used later by the Assad government in Syria. But that hurt him when Colin Powell went before the United Nations and said, “This is WMD, and they’re going to do this and this and this.”  

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham Dies at 71

Biden DOJ Relaxed Fentanyl Policy While Reviewing Whistleblower Complaint

How a Pro-Reality Sports Brand Aims to Compete With Transgender-Aligned Nike

But that being said, Iraq never quite degenerated like Afghanistan. 

So, today they actually are working with the United States to expel Iranian influencers. And they do have elections. And we have Americans still there advising the Iraqi government.  

Was it worth all those deaths and mayhem and casualties? I don’t know. We’ll see, but I don’t think it was. I supported the war, and I’m someone who supported it to the end. 

The........

© The Daily Signal