How George W. Bush Let Iran Go Nuclear

I for one oppose another Middle East war even as the theocons are all too ready to launch a war against Iran having apparently learned little from the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan.  However, a column in the New York Times which is far too militant for my tastes does throw blame for allowing Iran's advances toward a nuclear bomb where it truly belongs: on George W. Bush and not Barack Obama.  The Iran mess is yet another disaster that Obama inherited from the feckless Chimperator and Darth Vader/Emperor Palpatine Cheney.  Here are the compelling portions of the column:

But don’t blame President Obama. Indeed, this American defeat was set in motion long before he took office. 

What three American presidents, four Israeli prime ministers and a dozen European leaders vowed would never happen is actually happening. What was not to be is almost a reality. The Iranian bomb is nearly here. 

Why wasn’t the West able to mobilize its political, economic and military resources in time to force Tehran to give up its nuclear ambition? The answer may be described as a spelling error. 

After 9/11, the United States was determined to strike back, destroy terrorist sanctuaries and display its imperial might. President George W. Bush chose to do all of this in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Afghanistan may have been a mistake, but it was an understandable one: Al Qaeda enjoyed the Taliban’s support and had found refuge in Taliban-controlled territory. But invading Iraq was an incomprehensible mistake, as there were no links between Saddam Hussein and the 19 terrorists who attacked New York and Washington in September 2001. 

If Mr. Bush had decided to display American leadership and exercise American power by launching a diplomatic campaign against Iran rather than a military one against Iraq 10 years ago, the United States’ international standing would be far greater today. 

The Bush administration’s decision to go after Iraq rather than Iran was a fatal one, and the long-term consequences are only now becoming clear, namely a devastating American failure in the battle to prevent a nuclear Iran, reflected in Washington’s willingness to sign a deeply flawed agreement. 

Mr. Bush’s responsibility for the disaster now unfolding is twofold: He failed to target Iran a decade ago, and created a climate that made it very difficult to target Iran today. The Bush administration didn’t initiate a political-economic siege on Iran when it was weak, and Mr. Bush weakened America by exhausting its economic power and military might in a futile war. By the time American resolve was needed to fend off a genuine global threat, the necessary determination was no longer there. It had been wasted on the wrong cause. 

Republican leaders squandered the opportunity. Worse still, the United States got bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and that sucked all the oxygen out of America’s lungs. Mr. Bush passed on to Mr. Obama a nation that had lost much of the resolve it had possessed. When faced with a real threat to world peace, America’s will was spent. It had evaporated in the violent streets of Basra and Baghdad. 

Sure, Mr. Obama has made mistakes, too.  . . . .  But Mr. Obama was operating within the smoky ruins of the strategic disaster he had inherited.   After Iraq, America is a traumatized nation, with a limited attention span for problems in the Middle East. The empire is weary. 

Because America missed the opportunity for assertive diplomacy, all the options now left on the table are dire ones.   Rather than pursuing a dangerous interim agreement, the West must insist that all the centrifuges in Iran stop spinning while a final agreement is negotiated. President Obama was right to demand a settlement freeze in the West Bank in 2009. Now he must demand a total centrifuge freeze in Iran. 

Of course, the revisionist history crowd in the GOP prefers to ignore this truth and endeavors to place all blame on Obama.  As usual, their story line is a lie.  I continue to believe history will regard the Chimperator as one of the worse presidents in U.S. history.