What George W. Bush Can Teach Us in the Aftermath of Trump's Assassination Attempt
The Iraq War had been going badly for a couple of years when President George W. Bush fired Donald Rumsfeld and appointed Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense and General David Petraeus as Commander, Multi-National Force – Iraq. Both men were known not only for professional expertise but also for a willingness to speak truth to power. Bush deliberately selected who he believed were the best men to solve the problem in Iraq. He did not choose people who were slavishly devoted to him. He then approved their new strategy, called “The Surge,” and placed his entire support behind it. Shortly after this, President Bush gave a speech at the U.S. Naval War College at which he laid out the new strategy. I was in the audience at that speech. Prior to it, I had been strongly in opposition to Bush’s Iraq War as much because of the arrogance of the President and his assistants as because of the flaws in his strat...
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