I'll follow President Obama on this one

[RHMerriman]

31. As president, Bush I was my last CinC; although I didn't see action in KUwait/Irqa

As president, Bush I was my last CinC; although I didn't see action in Kuwait/Iraq, I probably would have been in theater if the PGW had gone on longer - for example, if the Hussein regime had collapsed and the Allies had occupied the entire country.

Which, as bad as that would have been, probably would have been better for the world than the history that panned out. So, I won't give him a great amount of credit for strategic thought in terms of SW Asia - as a GI Generation president, he knew that winning the peace was as important as winning the war, and he fumbled the peace.

Along with that, he did manage the US response to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR pretty well, all things considered, so it's a mixed bag.

He was, in fact, a fairly representative example of the GI Generation when in positions of power postwar, with all their faults and strengths. On balance, he successfully avoided a confrontation via force of arms with the Soviet bloc, which was the positive sine qua non of post-1949 US policy; but he also saw the US as an imperial power, which is the negative aspect of the same group of men.

He was, of course, a patriot who was willing to put himself in harm's way, and did during WW II, and he appears to have managed his personal life with a minimum of scandal. He was, at times, willing to be a true Protestant ascendency patrician and do the moral thing, as when he called out David Duke as a racist in the Louisiana governor's race and endorsed the Democrat - even though Duke was the obvious outgrowth of Atwater's Southern Strategy for the GOP. I will give him some credit for those sorts of decisions.

In comparison to Nixon, Reagan, Bush II, and Trump, in retrospect, Bush I looks like a genius as a political leader and strategist, but in reality, he was a decent man, with the positives and negatives of his generation and class, and who was poorly met by the reactionary Republicans rising up around him.

I never voted for him, but when I was in uniform, I didn't think he was going to throw away my life and the lives of those I served with on a political whim, unlike Nixon in 1969-73 or Bush II in Iraq - or, for that matter, Trump.

Sometimes, once one takes the oath and writes the proverbial blank check to one's country, that's the most one can expect.

Not the worst epitaph.

Fair winds and following seas, Mr. Bush.