… for projections.
TIME magazine’s cover story eschews a traditional review of the five years in American history since 9/11. Instead the magazine allows Harvard historian Niall Ferguson to make predictions — in the guise of history from the vantage point of 2031.
You’ll likely enjoy some of his comments and grumble at others. I cracked up when I read the following, designed to predict the future historian’s take on the Bush administration:
Would another President have done better? That was the question posed by Christopher Hitchens in his best-selling biography Bush: A Study in Greatness, published in 2011, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Hitchens argued convincingly that neither Al Gore nor John Kerry would have been more successful than Bush in defusing the jihadist threat. “We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives but they’re a nuisance,” Kerry said in an interview in 2004, drawing a parallel with the containment of prostitution, illegal gambling and organized crime. But Islamist terrorism was a much more imminent threat than climate change (Gore’s bugaboo) and a much more serious threat than illegal gambling. In the wake of 9/11, defeating the terrorists had to be America’s No. 1 priority. Bush understood this. Had it not been for the Iraq debacle, he would be remembered as the Avenger of 9/11.
Here’s what Christopher Hitchens actually said about President Bush during a May interview with Carolina Journal Radio:
I don’t mean to appear here just a critic of the Bush administration, though I am one. … I’m quite happy being a single-issue voter here. I’m not a Republican — registered or otherwise — but I do think that the president has identified the main threat, and he’s at least attempted to call it by its right name.
