The FP piece is appropriately subtitled "Don't fall for the nostalgia -- George W. Bush's foreign policy really was that bad." (John Ibbitson, that means you!) Even if you read the news closely from 2000-8, it's worth a look at this list of appalling and criminal actions; all the more so if you avoided the news in that period.
Two items on this list really stick out -- they remind us that domestic policies and inaction by Bush and his gang have undermined American strength in the foreign policy sphere, maybe permanently. This point cannot be repeated too often, though American "leaders" show little awareness and interest. Here are those items, with my emphasis:
11. Hurricane Katrina. It takes a truly spectacular domestic-policy blunder to register as a foreign-policy screw-up, too. Yet Bush's bungled response to Hurricane Katrina was exactly that. Observers around the world saw this debacle as both a demonstration of waning U.S. competence and a revealing indicator of continued racial inequality, if not outright injustice. (You know you've screwed up when you get offers of relief aid from Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.) Because America's "soft power" depends on other states believing that we know what we are doing and that we stand for laudable ideals, the disaster in New Orleans was yet another self-inflicted blow to America's global image. If the United States cannot take good care of its own citizens, why should anyone think we can "nation-build" in some distant foreign land?
14. The Crash Heard 'Round the World. By lowering taxes while waging costly wars, Bush produced near-record fiscal deficits and a mountain of foreign debt. At the same time, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's easy money policy encouraged a vast real estate bubble that eventually collapsed in 2008. Bush's economic team also paid little attention to regulating Wall Street, thereby facilitating the reckless behavior that produced a major financial collapse in 2008. The resulting meltdown cost Americans trillions of dollars and millions of jobs, and the aftermath will affect U.S. economic prospects for many years to come.
Although Bush does not deserve all the blame for causing the greatest recession since the 1930s, he was in charge when it happened and his actions contributed significantly to the debacle. And because international influence ultimately rests upon a state's economic strength, the damage wrought by this economic crisis may be Bush's most enduring foreign-policy legacy.
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