What will Bush be remembered for & what will you be remembered for?

There are people who when they leave make you sigh with a sense of loss but there are also those who when they leave make you sigh with a sense of relief. It is every good person's intention to leave a good legacy but whether one actually manages to do that is a different matter altogether. The legacy you leave behind is what you will be remembered for. Life is so full of twists and turns that along the way may result in a person being remembered for an entirely different issue from the one he/she intended in the first place.



The outgoing US President. George W. Bush, I am sure wanted to be remembered as the US President that put a stop to terrorism and a stop to the manufacturing of weapons of mass destruction but the decisions and choices he made during his term in office will make him be remembered for entirely different issues, most of them bad. Bush came into office eight years ago promising to put in practice a minimalist government, his rationale being the underpining philosophy that government is best that governs least but he exits today having governed a lot and made a mark with his free-market intervention. During his campaign for the presidency post he also promised to come up with a humanitarian-filled foreign policy but he leaves with not so humanitarian wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still haunting the lives of Americans and a diminishing U.S. reputation abroad. The billion dollar war in Iraq drags on, with a body count of some 4,000 U.S. soldiers to date, what is so humanitarian about that. He was the president who pledged that he would not pass on big problems to his successor but he leaves behind for Barack Obama, an economy that is in an atrocious shape with a trillion dollar deficit and most Americans in poor financial shape. Millions of Americans are out of work with the unemployment rate at a record high. A lot of American homeowners are delinquent on mortgage payments or are in foreclosure because of a meltdown of the housing market. The Dow Jones industrial average, in 2008, suffered the worst decline since 1931, and giant companies like General Motors were found gasping for breath. Life is so full of twists and turns which may inhibit a person from fulfilling his/her intentions and for Bush the twist and turn came in the form of the September 11 bombings which made him focus most of his attention on pulling all legal limits in targeting terrorists and resulted in most of his original campaign promises turning to dust.

Somewhere beneath the rubble of every endeavour gone awry are the tiny seeds of goodness and I dug for them in the history of Bush's tenure in office and here is what I came up with. Bush concentrated his attention, energy, troops
and resources on protecting Americans from terrorist attacks without a blue print to help him deal with it and in a way he was successful because for sure terrorists have not struck America again. Then there was his ambitious effort to combat AIDS which resulted in huge amounts being allocated to the funding to fight AIDS in Africa and for sure it went a long way in combating AIDS in Africa. Blanket criticism of Bush misses an important reality which is that not everything was Bush's fault. Congress and Senate are responsible for passing laws and were as usual responsible for policy and they passed a law to attack Iraq. Last but not least, in most instances Bush may not have admitted failure publicly but his turnaround in policy showed that at least he realised his mistake and was willing to change and try something new. For example the Bush administration made a series of massive blunders in 2003 and 2004 among which was the invasion and occupation of Iraq which was undertaken without first winning international legitimacy and without first gaining support from neighboring Arab states and which as a result led to tension within Iraq, tension within neighbouring Arab states and tension internationally. But starting from 2005 and up to now as Bush leaves office, he has been making some efforts to repair the situation with new approaches in handling Iraq. Change did not extend to all areas, and in many places it was too little, too late, but that
there has been a shift to the center in many crucial areas of foreign policy is simply undeniable.

Anyway the bottom line is are Americans better off or worse off than they were when Bush took office? The answer is undeniably that they are worse off and based on that question Bush's perfomance appraisal report card is abysmal. He will be remembered by many as the worst President that ever took office in USA but don't blame Bush and his minions, blame the Americans that put him in office two times. Personally, I , as a humanitarian will remember him as the President whose reaction was a bit too much on the indifferent side when New Orleans was hit by a Tsunami, memories of a flood-ravaged New Orleans with many African Americans being left to die, remain fresh in my psyche.

Bush's era is over and done with so now let us leave him to rest in peace and concentrate on you and me. Even though some of us hold no position of authority we enter and leave some territories, some worlds, some lives and those we leave behind will remember us for something. What will you and I be remembered for? I want my daughters to remember me for teaching them to sprout and bloom where ever they are planted, be it on rich soil or barren soil but whether this is actually what I will be remembered for is a different matter altogether because life is so full of twists and turns that along the way may result in a person being remembered for an entirely different issue from the one he/she intended in the first place.