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The Consequences to Come: American Power After Bush
The Consequences to Come American Power After Bush For the past seven years The New York Review of Books has critically examined the Bush administration's policies at home and abroad. The presidency of George W. Bush, as Jonathan Freedland noted, has created a near consensus among a wide range of Americans–both Republicans and Democrats–that the “invasion of Iraq was a c... more »alamity” and has “reduced America’s standing in the world and made the United States less, not more secure, leaving its enemies emboldened and its friends alienated.” The only dispute among this varied public is “over the size and depth of the hole into which Bush has led the country he pledged to serve.” Joan Didion described Vice President Dick Cheney as “the central player in the system of willed errors and reversals that is the Bush administration.”
Peter Galbraith argued that from the beginning of the occupation of Iraq, Bush “facilitated the very event he warned would be a disastrous consequence of a US withdrawal from Iraq: the takeover of a large part of the country by an Iranian-back militia.”
As the presidential campaign got underway, Michael Tomasky explained that “despite Bush’s failures and the discrediting of Republican governance, there is every chance that the next Republican president, should the party’s nominee prevail...will be just as conservative as Bush has been–perhaps even more so.” And Frank Rich predicted that it would take the Democrats’ “full powers of self-immolation” to lose the White House in 2008.
In this collection of essays, nine of the Review's contributors assess the human and political costs of the war on terror and the occupation of Iraq, and look ahead to the issues shaping the 2008 election campaign and at the challenges and opportunities that will face America and the new administration after Bush leaves Washington. The Consequences to Come includes:
Joan Didion on Dick Cheney
Joseph Lelyveld on the indefinite detention of “illegal enemy combatants”
Mark Danner on new evidence of Bush’s determination to invade Iraq
Peter Galbraith on how Iran has benefited from the US occupation of Iraq
Jonathan Freedland on the failures of Bush’s foreign policy
Jonathan Raban on the fragmentation of Karl Rove’s Republican majority
Frank Rich on new ideas for Democrats
Michael Tomasky on the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. on history and national stupidity
“...The editors met the challenges of the post-9/11 era in a way that most other leading American publications did not...the Review was there when we needed it most” –The Nation« less