Strategic Confusion: America's Conflicting Strategies and the War on Terrorism

The unprecedented controversy generated by the foreign policy of George W. Bush has not ended with the President’s return to Texas. Indeed, the battle to justify and vindicate his policies and to see their continuation under the new administration continues to animate the American foreign-policy debate. Through both the publication of documents professing A Charge Kept and concerted appearances by former Vice President Richard Cheney declaring that America should continue with Bush’s War on Terror, the controversial goals, methods and policies of the Bush years remain central to the American debate on how it should relate to the world and the threats it faces. While President Obama has tried to move the country and the debate on, for President Bush’s supporters any such change of course would not only demonstrate a lack of US will but would catastrophically endanger the American people.