This week's "Attorney at Large" Column

Meditations on George W’s Legacy
By James Castagnera
George W. Bush has just nine more months in office. Then he will write his memoirs, build his library and face his legacy. Many will cheer his departure. Many will rank him low on the list of modern presidents. That might be premature. Mr. Bush has a few things about which he can boast.
If we make it through the next nine months with no significant terrorist attacks on US territory, his post-Nine/Eleven record will be perfect. Whatever the successes and failures of the War on Terror, he will have batted a thousand in that important category at least.
His (largely unsung) success in Africa is another high spot of his presidency. At its inception only about 50,000 African HIV/AIDS sufferers had access to the medicinal cocktails that prolong normal life. Today millions are enjoying those drugs.
In the tumultuous world of K-12 public schools his “No Child Left Behind” Act is controversial, its renewal in doubt. More time is required to assess its efficacy.
Then there is the five-year-old war in Iraq. No real doubt remains about how badly we were misled by the Bush Administration. Saddam Hussein’s regime had no weapons of mass destruction and no ties to Al Qaeda. To the contrary, recently released documents indicate Hussein considered Al Qaeda a dangerous rival.
The troop surge seems to be working in Iraq, though suicide bombers continue to work their mischief with bloody consequences. Meanwhile, Obama’s aids have admitted that the senator, if elected, cannot make good on his campaign rhetoric about an immediate pullout. No matter who replaces Mr. Bush, America is in Iraq for the foreseeable future.
Is there a silver lining? For W’s legacy, the lining could be a peace accord in the Middle East. If he and Secretary of State Rice could pull off an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty and significantly draw down the US military presence in a more peaceful Iraq, Mr. B’s presidential legacy could include a stable Middle East. This would be a very big deal indeed.
The odds of this happening, of course, are long. Still, stranger things have happened in recent decades.
Who but Ronald Reagan really believed that America would suddenly win the Cold War, that the Berlin Wall would be ripped down virtually overnight, and that the Evil Empire would spin apart?
Who but Nelson Mandela really believed South African Apartheid would end without a bloodbath?
And who ever imagined that peace would finally break out in Northern Ireland?
Yet all these things happened in the past two decades, which makes me believe that peace in the Middle East may also be a real possibility.
Whether that happens or not, of course, some decades will have to pass before the jury of historians comes in with a reliable verdict on the Bush presidency. As I pointed out in this space a couple of weeks ago, some scholars are only just now beginning to take a second look at the war in Vietnam in light of subsequent political and economic developments in East and Southeast Asia. When that jury is finally in, LBJ may no longer look like a tragic figure driven from office by a foolish blunder.
Likewise, whatever happens in the Middle East in the next nine months, those readers still young enough will have to wait until they are senior citizens to see what will be the ultimate legacy of W’s two terms in the White House.
[Jim Castagnera, formerly of Jim Thorpe, is the Associate Provost/Associate Counsel at Rider University. A collection of his “Attorney at Large” columns is available at www.lulu.co,]
Just search "Castagnera" here.