The Two Presidents Bush
One thing that is touching about the present President Bush is that he seems determined to rescue his father's causes, even if that means confirming that his father left problems behind him.
Bush Senior famously raised taxes after promising not to do so. Junior seems determined to cut taxes every year, and to promise to cut taxes even more than he cuts them.
The reason Bush Senior raised taxes was that he wanted to balance the budget, and didn't see any way of making enough spending cuts to achieve this goal. Junior seems blissfully unconcerned about a growing deficit.
Bush Senior talked about the "thousand points of light"--non-profit, volunteer and church groups doing a lot of good for the poor and society, so there was no need for government to take over. This was probably never much more than a slogan for him. Bush Junior has talked about "faith-based initiatives" (unlike his father, he is apparently a born-again Christian). Once again, it does not seem this really means very much in policy terms, other than support for school vouchers, which are indeed a defining issue between most Democrats and many Republicans.
Bush Senior may have hesitated before doing anything at all about Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. There is a legend that Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney helped persuade him that it was possible to assemble the great "Coalition." [Update August 30: all I can find on the web are some references to Mulroney persuading Bush Sr. to get Security Council sanction, instead of acting unilaterally. This unauthorized biography of Bush Sr. says a leak to the effect that he was surprised by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and unprepared for any response, was ordered by Bush Sr. himself while he worked to persuade various elements of the military and bureaucracy that war was unavoidable.]
Saddam may have thought he had tacit approval (from the U.S.) to at least take the oil fields and refineries in the north of Kuwait; see the April Glaspie episode. Once Bush took action, he did so, of course, on a prodigious scale, but then he made the controversial decision not to pursue Saddam back to Baghdad, and not to overthrow his regime. In fact, the U.S. called off a no-fly zone that was protecting Shiite rebels, and Saddam proceeded to slaughter roughly 100,000 of them.
Two years later, an attempt was made to assassinate Bush Senior, and the Clinton Administration concluded that Saddam gave the order for that attempt.
Bush Junior got the chance to take Saddam out completely. This personal motivation must have counted for something--perhaps even more than Rumsfeld wanting to demonstrate the effectiveness of a small, high-tech force, so as to defeat his bureaucratic opponents as he reforms the Pentagon. (Link from Kausfiles, scroll down to March 30. As Kaus says, Rumsfeld presumably would not have exposed U.S. troops to unnecessary risk simply to win the bureaucratic battle; he must have wanted to conduct war in several theatres at once).
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