If only Bush defended democracy in office the way he did this week

Former president George W. Bush gave a great speech this week. He spoke out against prejudice and intolerance. He talked about the need for a culture of mutual respect, as a crucial precondition for the survival of our democracy. He made an eloquent plea for the centrality of freedom and human rights, and argued that they should not be the exclusive privilege of those who are already lucky enough to live in democracies.

Though Bush didn't name names, it was clear to anyone listening that he had President Donald Trump in mind. "Bigotry seems emboldened," Bush said. "Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication." And this: "And we know that when we lose sight of our ideals, it is not democracy that has failed. It is the failure of those charged with preserving and protecting democracy."

This was remarkably frank criticism coming from a former president – and one who mostly remained discreetly silent during the eight-year term of his successor, Barack Obama. (Obama, too, had some harsh words for the present administration this week.)

I wholeheartedly share Bush's faith in the virtues of the open society, virtues that are currently under attack both here at home and in the world at large. At a time when Trump seems only too eager to pander to our basest instincts and happy to coddle the dictators of the world, Bush's defense of democratic values came as a huge relief.

I only wish that he had done a better job of defending them during his term in office.

I'm sure that Bush is sincere in his support for freedom and human rights around the globe. But the harsh reality is that his conduct of our post-9/11 wars, which he fatefully entangled with U.S. efforts to spread democracy, did deeper and more lasting damage to that cause than any other U.S. policy since the war in Vietnam.

The intervention in Afghanistan began as a justifiable response to al-Qaida's attacks on the United States; the invasion of Iraq was a war of choice, ostensibly motivated by the need to eliminate Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. But as it gradually become clear that both wars required a long-term presence, the Bush administration decided to recast them as wars of liberation. The White House launched elaborate plans for dismantling despotic states and replacing them with thriving democracies. Yet both in Iraq and Afghanistan, efforts to advance the "freedom agenda" were terribly mismanaged, leading to predictably mixed results. From the very beginning, experts on democracy promotion warned that efforts to spread liberal values at gunpoint rarely succeed.

The vast amounts of blood and treasure lavished on these two wars in the years that followed understandably enraged many voters – not least in those parts of the country that we tend to rely on for military recruits. Most Americans are inherently skeptical about the value of any kind of overseas assistance as it is, and government spending on the war on terrorism ballooned at a time when many Americans were already slipping behind economically. Later, the financial crisis of 2008 merely deepened the sense that Washington elites were ignoring Americans at home even as our endless wars consumed huge chunks of the budget. Today, despite the thousands of lives lost and trillions spent, we are still waiting for democracy to take permanent root in Baghdad and Kabul.

There are plenty of good practical reasons that the defense of human rights and democracy should be an integral part of U.S. foreign policy. Yet it's easy to understand why many Americans now tend to associate a values-driven approach with the kind of arrogant adventurism that gets people killed. The failure of Bush-era nation-building found its logical response in Obama's minimalist, low-stakes approach to diplomacy ("don't do stupid s---") as well as in Trump's defiant isolationism ("America First") and his populist contempt for the "elites" within his own political party. The fact that neither post-Bush president has been keen to embrace the role of democracy in our foreign policy has everything to do with Bush's legacy.

Bush might have done well to acknowledge some of this background in his remarks. In this denialism, the president resembles many of his former Washington colleagues, who continue to hold themselves aloof from any sort of moral and personal responsibility for the debacle in Iraq. We have, in fact, largely avoided a proper historical reckoning with the war – partly because it's still going on.

I look forward to hearing more from our 43rd president. His open political engagement is to be welcomed. Let's hope, for the country's sake, that his future remarks will find room for a bit more self-criticism as well as attacks on Trump.