The Decline of America by David D. Schein

Author:David D. Schein [Schein, David D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Posthill Press
Published: 2018-01-09T16:00:00+00:00

THE BUSH INTERNATIONAL RECORD

As discussed above, much of Bush’s international record is tied to the attacks on 9/11. This led, directly or indirectly, to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Not discussed above was a scandal that grew out of the Iraq invasion. In 2004, news reports began to relate that U.S. military guards were torturing captives at the Abu Ghraib Prison near Baghdad, Iraq. In the period that followed, the general in charge of the prison was removed from command, many of the troops were disciplined, and in some cases, prosecuted, and the U.S. had another black eye from the Iraq invasion (Taguba, 2004). Written reports could be disclaimed, but the existence of a damning internal report by General Taguba and the videos and photos released of the prisoner abuse verified the allegations. This caused an even greater backlash in the U.S. against the Iraq invasion and further hurt U.S. relations around the Middle East.

Bush’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was strained for several reasons. In 2001, a U.S. spy plane flying over the South China Sea was clipped by a PRC fighter jet. The U.S. plane was forced to make an emergency landing on Chinese soil. The PRC fighter jet crashed and the pilot died. The twenty-four crew members of the spy plane were held briefly by the Chinese (Kan, 2001). The PRC did return the twenty-four crew members, but kept the plane for several months. The U.S. crew did what they could to destroy as much as possible of the secret information and equipment on the plane, but the PRC’s access to the plane compromised valuable equipment. Later, the plane was disassembled and removed from PRC territory by a U.S. crew (U.S. Military, 2001). Bush later announced that the U.S. would support Taiwan in the event of an invasion from the People’s Republic of China (Leffler, 2011).

In an action later reversed by Barack Obama, Bush declined to sign the Kyoto Protocol, the first treaty that attempted to reach an agreement on “global warming” (Pfiffner, 2008). Bush’s position was that the treaty allowed developing countries, including China, to continue to pollute while disadvantaging the U.S., which would be under much stricter rules.

In an important development for future U.S. security, Bush withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (Zimmerman, 2007). This allowed the U.S. to begin testing advanced anti-missile defense systems. This is a rare bright spot in Bush’s administration in that risks for the U.S. from foreign missiles, now including North Korea and Iran, continue to grow. An effective anti-missile system is critical to the long-term security of the U.S.

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