There Was No ‘Good’ Iraq War

George H.W. Bush, lionized by the press in death, began destabilization of Iraq and region

The 41st president of the United States, George H.W. Bush, was laid to rest this week — about 28 years following what many in the foreign-policy establishment call his greatest political triumph, but which should be more rightly seen as the beginning of one of America’s greatest disasters.

Bush was eulogized yesterday in glowing terms: A representative comment came from the historian Jon Meacham, a Bush friend and biographer, who called him “the last great-soldier statesman” and “our shield” in dangerous times, the AP said.

Funerals, of course, tend to be times when the dead are remembered fondly, and no one would expect those who spoke from the pulpit yesterday to offer anything but praise and humor. They offer an ideal vision of the recently deceased, even of public figures with decidedly mixed (at best) public records like President Bush, a vision that can color the way former presidents are sent into posterity.

Bush the diplomat, the skillful player on the international stage, just does not ring true given the damage his presidency left behind, particularly in the Middle East. In our popular histories, we tend to bifurcate the two Gulf Wars — the good Gulf War of…