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President Barack Obama invited President Bush to join him as he traveled to ?ground zero? in lower Manhattan last week.  President Bush declined the offer.  In issuing this invitation, perhaps President Obama recognized how much he truly owes to President Bush.  In fact, one could probably argue that President Bush?s decisions right after 9/11 made the death of Bin Laden possible.  Several thoughts:

1. After 9/11, Bush waged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that forged a military so skilled that it carried out a complicated covert raid with only minor complications.
2. A detention and interrogation system constructed by the Bush administration, once condemned by Obama, produced the intelligence that led the SEALS to Osama Bin Laden.  This is indisputable!  Obama campaigned against the legal system adopted by the Bush administration to capture, detain, question and try terrorist suspects, including those at the center of Bin Laden?s network.  After pledging to close Guantanamo within a year of taking office, Obama failed to do so.  In fact, he altered rather than scrapped the Bush military commission system.  We may never know exactly when and how all of the intelligence that led to Bin Laden was gathered, but I suspect that the Bush administration’s infrastructure yielded the most valuable information
3. We must never forget that the Bush war on terror brought down the Taliban in Afghanistan, scattered and decimated al Qaeda and made Bin Laden a fugitive.  That Bin Laden was killed and even found in the first place is a total vindication of the Bush war on terror.  Bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda in disarray because of what we once knew as the ?war on terror.?  Perhaps it is time to re-introduce that phrase into our vocabulary.

Thanks, President Bush!  You made what happened to Bin Laden possible.

See Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post (5 Amy 2011) and Scott Wilson and Anne Kornblut in the Washington Post (4 May 2011). PRINT PDF