British writer Oliver Kamm has a piece up at comment is free proclaiming that George Bush has made the world a safer place. Kamm writes:

The grand strategy pursued by the U.S. under Bush has overestimated the plasticity of the international order, but it has got one big thing right. There is an integral connection between the terrorism that targets western societies and the autocratic states in which Islamist fanaticism is incubated.

Remember that connection? Or has it been supplanted in the public consciousness with the all-important connection between the Iraq War and world opinion? Bush’s critics are fond of saying that the President squandered the world’s sympathy in the aftermath of 9/11. But in actuality, George W. Bush should be praised for not having squandered the clarity — moral and historical — that the attacks conferred upon America’s obligation to its citizens and the world. Immediately after 9/11, the criticism most often leveled at the U.S. was that we were indifferent to the politics of the Arab world. Seven years later, the same voices are decrying America’s arrogance in trying to foster democracy in Mesopotamia. In late 2002, those opposed to the coming war with Iraq predicted that the U.S. would install a puppet dictator and leave. Today, they cite Prime Minister al Maliki’s political autonomy as evidence of a rift between the U.S. and Iraq.

Indeed, Kamm is right. Bush has made the world safer, and he has done so by remaining focused on the connection between Middle Eastern tyrannies and Islamist terror. In this sense, the President served as America’s loudest and most important critic — for he reversed the U.S.’s longstanding tacit acceptance of a politics steeped in blood. In late 2001, many rambled on about that connection, but as we now know they were merely filling the blanks in a running Mad Lib of anti-American condemnation. Bush has made many mistakes, but his resolve in tackling this world historical challenge is not one of them.