Broder: Bush and Blair Unwise -- But Courageous

By: E&P Staff In his syndicated column to appear Sunday in The Washington Post and other papers, David Broder explores the joint George Bush-Tony Blair press conference in Washington, D.C. this week -- he calls them "two wounded warriors" -- before coming to an oddly conflicted conclusion.

"History will record that both of them saw the threat to the West posed by terrorism and responded courageously," Broder writes at the end. "The wisdom of their policy and the conduct of their governments are not likely to be
judged as highly."

This would appear to state that the two men had the courage to respond to terrorism -- in thoroughly unwise ways, such as launching a pre-emptive invasion of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, and do it in a poorly planned and completely botched manner that historians will judge harshly.

But despite much evidence that the two men, and particularly Bush, were driven to attack Iraq for reasons that go far beyond 9/11 and terror attacks in Britain, Broder declares flatly that they were simply "driven by the nightmare both have seen close at hand," arming them "with a conviction that their pre-eminent mission was to combat the forces behind these assaults."

Broder then quotes "brave words" from Blair on the need to fight terrorism, and then notes that "a grateful Bush spoke from the heart when he said, 'What I know is the world needs courage. And what I know is this good man is a courageous man.?