I judge Presidents by their policy outcomes combined with original intent, with intent mattering very little.

You can't feed your family off intentions.

Judging policy as good/bad is different from saying "did objectively terrible things". The latter is saying that they had bad intentions.

>The latter is saying that they had bad intentions.

Does it really? Sometimes good intentions can end up with objectively terrible outcomes because nobody can see into the future. The proverb "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" comes to mind.

I think there's a lot of truth to that proverb because the vast majority of people don't think of themselves, or the reasons they do things, as "evil" or bad. In their internal logic most people act for "good reasons", but "good" can be a rather subjective thing, so the internal reasoning doesn't always translate properly to the outcomes in external reality.

The troubling thing is that presidents are so often consumed with an idea of greatness that is completely antithetical to that. They want to be remembered as a great leader. Not as some lame victim of circumstance.

To have heroes we also need villains. It is terribly unfair, but maybe that should act as a warning. If you hold the lives of thousands in the balance your own reputation will be linked to the fate of those people.

GWB had the choice of (1) start war in Iraq for vague reasons, (2) don't start war in Iraq.

He chose (1).

You're aware of the 1998 Act signed by Bill Clinton I hope?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Liberation_Act

And the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Iraq_(1998) ?

"The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 is a United States Congressional statement of policy stating that "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq..."[1][2] It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, .... "

He stopped short of an invasion, though. It can be official US policy to oppose a regime and yet not start a war.

His rhetoric (and others in the Democrat government, including Hillary's) was comparable to GWB's.

To talk big and not do anything emboldens the target.

Good example, as far as the historical record is concerned, GWB thought that they had WMDs. Any claims that it was started for another reason needs evidence or it ventures into conspiracy theory territory.

The idea that Saddam had nuclear weapons seems like more of a conspiracy theory to me, since there was never a single piece of evidence for it. Saddam did have chemical weapons that USA helped him use against Iran, but experts agreed their shelf life had expired and they had aged to the point of uselessness by 2003. Lots of other nations that haven't been invaded do have "WMDs", so anyone reasonable would certainly suspect "another reason".

I don't recall the official line ever being 'nuclear weapons'. It was always 'chemical weapons', which were redefined to be 'weapons of mass destruction' in order to then be grouped with nuclear weapons and have some of that fear become associated with them. The irony, of course, was seen in the US bragging about going into Iraq with the largest conventional munition ever made, the MOAB (mother-of-all-bombs).

The Iraq war was used to bolster voters for the next year's election - the US had been punching ghosts and getting nowhere in Afghanistan after 9/11, so they switched targets to one that looked similarly foreign and, more importantly, couldn't hide.

You don't recall all the back-and-forth about the IAEA? Hans Blix had visited this site and El Baradei had visited that site? Really? Do you actually remember that time, or do you just remember later reporting about it? Because in the news I watched in 2002-3, it was all IAEA all the time.

Yep, I remember that, and the inspections had a timeline that would have concluded in several months after the US invasion started. The US's allies were asking it to wait for those inspections to conclude.

Then, of course, the US ignored them because "he's going to hide the evidence", invaded for its own reasons... and famously found nothing. Blix was painted as an incompetent by the US, but even after stomping Iraq into dust and having full control of the country, the US found nothing.

Yep, lots of people were wrong about this. Being wrong is not evil though.

It certainly can be, and in this case it was. The GWB administration kept ignoring evidence and demanding new evidence until finally evidence could be manufactured that fit their policy goals. (This isn't a partisan judgment, since this tragedy was repeated as farce in the lead-up to the Democrat Party's war in Libya. Still, leaving the Libyans to their own devices after the horrible meaningless unprovoked war has probably been better for everyone than what we've done instead in Iraq.)

Have you ever heard of Project for a New American Century?