George W. Bush is among the five least accomplished U.S. presidents,
according to a new survey by the U.S.'s top 238 leading presidential
scholars. They have been polled by the Siena College Research
Institute's (SRI) annually for the last 28 years. While president
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who led the country from 1933 until his
death in 1945, ranked first in overall accomplishments, former
President Bush ranked worst among modern presidents -and the fifth
worst in history.
According to the Survey of U.S. Presidents the top five, including
Franklin D. Roosevelt, are Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
The presidential scholars ranked the U.S. Presidents on six personal
attributes (background, imagination, integrity, intelligence, luck and
willingness to take risks); five forms of ability (compromising,
executive, leadership, communication and overall abilities); and eight
areas of accomplishment including domestic affairs, economic, working
with Congress and their party, appointing supreme court justices and
members of the executive branch, avoiding mistakes and foreign policy.
If one analyzes just the Bush administration approach to foreign
policy, health care and human rights one may consider among the
biggest foreign policy blunders the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The
Bush administration blatantly ignored the advice from Gen. Eric
Shinseki, who had estimated that several hundred thousand troops would
be required to secure Iraq. Even more seriously, the war against Iraq
was based, from the beginning, on false premises.
Vice President Dick Cheney repeatedly stated that Iraq was "the
geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for
many years, but most especially on 9/11," in spite of the fact that
there was no evidence for such assertion. The bipartisan 9/11
Commission itself found that Iraq had no involvement in the 9/11
attacks and no collaborative operational relationship with Al Qaeda.
Compounding the wrongness of the approach towards Iraq is the right to
initiate a preemptive war, flaunting international law. The 2006
updated National Security Strategy of the United States had
established that, "....The greater the threat, the greater is the risk
of inaction -and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory
action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time
and place of the enemy's attack. There are few greater threats than a
terrorist attack with WMD."
As was clearly demonstrated not only did the government of Iraq not
have any WMD, but at no point it could have been considered a threat
to the United States, given the obvious difference in military
capability between both countries. This was no impediment for former
President Bush and his closest associates to continue using that
rationale for the war against that country. That war and the
justification for engaging in preemptive wars are among the most
serious and damaging foreign policy decisions of the Bush
administration.
If one analyzes the Bush presidency regarding its approach to health
care one can find a policy of disregard for people's health and
support for corporate interests, which is, after all, only a
reflection of the Bush administration decisions on almost all economic
matters.
The Bush administration blocked efforts to allow Medicare to negotiate
cheaper prescription drugs for seniors thus negatively affecting their
health and quality of life, while simultaneously depriving American
taxpayers of savings from the very marketplace competition touted by
White House economists. The administration also went to court to block
lawsuits by patients who had been injured by defective prescription
drugs and medical devices. In addition, the General Accounting Office
conducted a study that concluded that the Bush administration created
illegal, covert propaganda to promote its industry-supported Medicare
bill.
The Bush administration record on human rights is dismal. Who can
forget the photos of prisoners' abuse in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq
carried out by the U.S. Army and other U.S. governmental agencies and
that have tainted forever the image of the U.S. as a defender of human
rights? To compound the magnitude of the abuse, Janis Karpinsky, a
commander at Abu Ghraib estimated later that 90% of the detainees in
the prison were innocent.
Recently Physicians for Human Rights has uncovered evidence that
indicates the Bush administration conducted illegal and unethical
human experiments and carried out research on detainees in CIA
custody. In addition, medical personnel engaged not only in torture of
prisoners but also in the crime of illegal experimentation, activities
in clear violation of the Nuremberg Code.
It would be naive to think that all negative aspects of the Bush
administration are the responsibility of former President Bush
himself. He obviously is the face for members of his administration
and others who were influencing policy decisions. But the ultimate
responsibility falls on him. And he is the one that will have to
respond to history for his actions.