George W. Bush refuses to learn the lesson of Afghanistan

George W. Bush.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

It is sometimes tempting to imagine where the Republican Party would be today if the following scenario had unfolded: After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden was captured before he escaped from Afghanistan; the U.S. limited that war to the achievable aims of routing al-Qaeda cells and punishing the Taliban for its noncooperation; we never invaded Iraq at all.

Maybe, given the 2007-08 financial crisis, history would not have changed that much even in that alternate universe. But it's not hard to believe that George W. Bush might have been re-elected in 2004 with something closer to 56 percent of the vote rather than 51 percent, ushering in an even bigger Republican Senate majority than the 55 seats the GOP won in that election. John Kerry would have gone the way of Michael Dukakis, if not Walter Mondale, rather than coming within a whisker in Ohio of winning the White House.

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W. James Antle III

W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner, the former editor of The American Conservative, and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?.