Al Qaeda’s attacks on 9/11 were strategically well-conceived. Strikes on the World Trade Center, combined with destruction of key targets in Washington, aimed to cripple both the American economy and US Government with the strategic objective of driving American forces out of the Middle East. Osama bin Laden had reasons for optimism. While earlier al Qaeda attacks on American embassies in Africa, the Kobar Towers US military barracks in Saudi Arabia and the USS Cole elicited official denunciations and vows to track down the perpetrators, actual responses entailed a few cruise missiles tossed at inconsequential targets in Afghanistan. Additionally, from bin Laden’s perspective political prospects looked promising. After Bush won election by a narrow margin in Florida, disgruntled losers maintained he had been “selected not elected,” and contemptuously portrayed President Bush as a political—if not mental—light weight, a veritable “Bush leaguer” (pun intended) playing over his head.

History will judge President Bush based on his response to the strategic challenges posed by 9/11. He ignored naysayers who resurrected overused Vietnam War analogies and lamented Soviet Army defeats at the hands the “battle-hardened Mujahedin,” to move boldly against al Qaeda’s bases in Afghanistan. While critics decried the impossibility of it all, the President’s actions resulted in a democratic regime in Kabul. More significantly, President Bush grasped the strategic nature of the conflict; total war on a global scale; a war to determine the world our grandchildren will inherit. Understanding that political and economic desperation drive the disaffected to terrorism, Generalissimo Bush established a strategic paradigm to foster democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights where despotism formerly held sway. Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) deposed Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical dictatorship to establish a democracy. Iraq now joins Turkey and Afghanistan as Middle Eastern Islamic democracies. Strategically, OIF disrupted the “arch of tyranny” which previously ran from Damascus eastward through Baghdad to Teheran. Since October 2001, military coalitions led by the United States have freed ten times as many people as Union forces did in the American Civil War.  Globally, democracies expand while tyrannies wither and tyrants had better quake.

Like Lincoln and Roosevelt, President Bush perseveres in the face of critics whose lesser visions flounder in strategic ambiguity and political uncertainty. Great leaders respond to great challenges confident that the verdict of history is what matters. History will rank George W. Bush among America’s greatest wartime presidents.

Dr. Earl H. Tilford  is Professor of History at Grove City College. He enjoyed an extensive military career and after retiring from the U.S. Air Force, served as an associate professor of history at Troy State University in Montgomery and professor of military history at the U.S. Air Force Air Command and Staff College. In 1993 he became director of research at the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute in Carlisle, Pa., where he worked on a project that looked at possible future terrorist threats. He has authored three books on the Vietnam War and co-edited a book on Operation Desert Storm. He has lectured throughout the U.S. and abroad on the Vietnam War and, more recently, the future of armed conflict.