Saturday, January 24, 2009

Predicting Bush's Legacy

Something I should have expected but which never occurred to me was that this past week people would start predicting what historians would some day call the biggest legacy of George Bush's presidency. What two sentences might appear in a high school history book fifty years from now?

Bill Frist predicts it will be health care, both global and domestic.

This website (which is somewhat rudely has not yet added "Former" to Bush's title) predicts it will be the lack of significant domestic terrorist attacks since 9/11/2001. I certainly hope this does not become something historically notable!

Here is Bush's own estimation in his farewell address.

Here is my guess. Compared to the first four years of the Iraq War, the past two years have really taught our military how to effectively fight terrorism. Although I hope that I am wrong and the lessons our military has learned will not turn out to be of historically prominent importance I fear it this will be true. (Engram has some charts, but what I can't find is a link to any chart of the enemy's losses compared to the number and size of their attacks.)

UPDATE: More on fighting AIDS here.

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