Obama's Iraq?

The Washington Post article “Will Libya Become Obama’s Iraq?” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/will-libya-become-obamas-iraq/2011/03/30/AFEjkhIC_story.html) discusses the similarities between Bush’s actions in Iraq and Obama’s in Libya, as well as Obama’s denial that the situation in Libya is at all similar to what Bush did in Iraq. As seen through this article, it seems as if Obama is saying that he is the “international good guy” (Loewen 221), but that Bush was one of those ‘bad’ presidents who tried to exert supreme control. It was bad when Bush invaded Iraq without approval from Congress, but it’s okay that Obama sent troops to Libya without asking Congress, because Obama is simply “act[ing] on behalf of human rights, democracy, and ‘the American way’” (Lowewn 221). While there are obviously differences between the situations in Iraq and Libya, I think that they’re becoming a little too similar than is comfortable for a lot of people. So there is thus this need to prove that the situations are inherently different because of intent: Obama is a humanitarian and Bush had selfish, economic, and political reasons for invading Iraq. So even if the situations are similar, they’re being portrayed as opposites, because Obama is being portrayed as the hero and Bush the villain (or vise versa depending on your source). This plays into how we’ve been taught to see American history: in a very clear-cut way. Bush will probably be shown in textbooks as a failure of a president, so it’s okay to make the Iraq war his fault. But if Obama is still popular in ten years, textbooks will likely show the military presence in Libya as humanitarian effort, never showing the similarities between Libya and Iraq. As we see in “The American Pageant,” the president and vice president are held responsible (for better for worse) for everything that happens during their administration. Everything that happens during that time period becomes directly reflected upon them. “The American Pageant had this to say about Nixon: “An ill-timed “goodwill” tour by Vice President Nixon through South America in 1958 reaped a harvest of spit and spite…since the masses could not vent their anger by spitting on the United States, they spat on the vice president of the United States” (Bailey and Kennedy 922). The executive branch, in many ways, is not only s representative for the country, but is seen as the entire country. But as Loewen argues, American textbooks and pop-culture clearly have a warped view and representation of what exactly the president does and is responsible for.