OP-ED: Bush on Back Foot (Independent, IRELAND)

George Bush's valedictory trip to Baghdad will be remembered less for his "security pact" with the Iraqi government and the agreement on American troop withdrawal than for the incident, more comical than menacing, at his press conference on Sunday.

History, the saying goes, repeats itself twice: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. The farcical element came in when a journalist threw a pair of shoes at the President. In Iraq, such a gesture is regarded not so much as an attack as an appalling insult. Mr Bush, greatly to his credit, took it as a joke.

On the tragic side of the ledger, he will serve out the last weeks of his presidency with very little credit. An agreement -- long in the making -- to withdraw American combat troops from Iraq by the end of June, and all US forces by the end of 2011, hardly begins to compensate for the colossal errors made by invading the country in the first place and in the subsequent ham-fisted attempts to find a political settlement. The war in Afghanistan, a matter of greater strategic importance, is going badly. It remains to be seen whether the incoming administration under Barack Obama can muster sufficient American and allied troops to prosecute the war vigorously and defeat the Taliban.

In the wider world, the United States has undergone a massive decline in standing and respect. It remains the richest and most powerful country in the world, but it has failed dramatically to meet the challenges of the new century. For that, the Bush administration must take a huge share of the blame.

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