Bush 'no failure'

The two most influential women in President George Bush’s White House launched a fierce defence of the president’s legacy against critics calling his administration one of the worst in history.

“I know it’s not, and so I don’t really feel like I need to respond to people that view it that way,” first lady Laura Bush said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. “I think history will judge and we’ll see later.”

And in another interview US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said claims that the Bush administration had been one of the worst ever were “ridiculous”.

“I think generations pretty soon are going to start to thank this president for what he’s done. This generation will,” Ms Rice told CBS’ Sunday Morning programme.

“Because I think the fact that we have really made foreign assistance not just an issue of giving humanitarian aid or giving money to poor people, but really insisting on good governance and fighting corruption.

“I think the fact that this president has laid the groundwork for a Palestinian state, being the first president, as a matter of policy, to say that there should be one, and now, I think, laying the foundation that’s going to lead to that Palestinian state – I can go on and on.”

Mrs Bush, who called the shoe-throwing incident in Baghdad an “assault”, rebuffed critics who said the US turned its military might and resources to the war in Iraq before finishing the job in Afghanistan.

She noted that under her husband’s watch, the US toppled Saddam Hussein and liberated millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq from oppressive governments and also highlighted the president’s work to provide treatment for diseases like Aids and malaria to millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa.

She said her husband responded to the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks in a way that had kept the nation safe.

Mrs Bush said that while the president laughed it off when an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at him during a news conference earlier this month in Iraq, she was not amused. The president deftly dodged the shoes and continued the news conference with Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki after security officials dragged the journalist from the room.

“The president laughed it off,” she said. “He wasn’t hurt. He’s very quick. As you know, he’s a natural athlete and ducked it. But on the other hand, it is an assault. And I think it should be treated that way. And I think people should think of it that way.”

On the other hand, she said the incident reflected change in Iraq.

“As bad as the incident is, in my view, it is a sign that Iraqis feel a lot freer to express themselves,” she said.

Mrs Bush challenged critics who said that Iraq was a distraction from the US mission in Afghanistan, where heightened violence is causing renewed instability.

“I don’t think that’s true at all. We’ve stayed very, very invested in Afghanistan. Not as invested militarily, maybe, and maybe that’s what the critics say, that it should have been more military. But I think we stayed very invested,” she said.

Ms Rice said it would not be long before Mr Bush’s contributions to the world would be acknowledged.

“When you look at what this president took on in terms of Aids relief and foreign assistance to the world, when you look at the number of countries ... and the number of people that this president has actually liberated – you know, I really am someone who believes that you don’t want to pay too much attention to today’s headlines,” she said.

But recognition of big achievements sometimes took a long time, she said.

Ms Rice noted that while Germany was reunified in 1990, the work that made it possible was done in the 1940s, “when things didn’t look quite so rosy”. So, she said, historians who were now making judgments about the Bush administration and its Middle East policies were not very good historians.

“One cannot yet judge the effects of decisions that this president has taken on what the Middle East will become,” Ms Rice said. “I mean, for goodness’ sakes, good historians are still writing books about George Washington.”