The dire situation is Iraq is ...
A. mostly Bush's fault, or,
B. mostly Obama's fault.
Well, The Washington Post's column by Marc Thiessen says,
Now in 2014, as Iraq descends into chaos, Democrats are trying to blame the fiasco on — you guessed it — George W. Bush. “I don’t think this is our responsibility,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, declaring that the unfolding disaster in Iraq “represents the failed policies that took us down this path 10 years ago.”So Iraq in June 2014 is Bush's fault. Because Bush. (Read the rest of the column.)
But let's do some math.
Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) commenced on March 19, 2003. From that date until January 20, 2009, whatever happened in Iraq was squarely on Bush's plate. That's 2,134 days.
Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009. On that day, whatever happened in Iraq landed squarely on his plate. From then until now has been 1,974 days, 160 days fewer than Bush.
That means that the crisis in Iraq is computationally 48 percent Obama's fault and 52 percent Bush's fault.
But wait! A decision (or lack of one) made by a president yesterday is far more influential than one made years before. So we have to find a meaningful way to weight the decisions of each president appropriately. I call it the Recency Weighting Factor, or RWF.
Let's see . . . I've got it!
 |
President George W. Bush played golf 24 times during eight years in the White House, ABC News' Good Morning America reports. Bush stopped playing while in office after an Aug. 19, 2003, truck bombing in Baghdad killed the U.N.'s top official in Iraq. He decided at that time, Bush said, according to The Washington Post, that "it's just not worth it anymore." "Playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal," Bush said. (link) |
 |
| Last weekend Barack Obama played his 175th and 176th rounds of golf as president. He played first at Sunnylands, the famously private course on the Rancho Mirage, California estate of the late billionaire Walter Annenberg. Obama next played at Porcupine Creek, the equally private course on the nearby estate of the very-much-alive tech billionaire Larry Ellison. (Link) |
So Bush played golf an average of once every 122 days of the eight years he was in office. Obama has played golf an average of once every 12 days of the 1,974 days he has been in office. That's basically 10 times as much (10.16, to be exact).
Therefore - for we are doing this scientifically, with math you know, and you don't want to be a science denier - the Recency Weighting Factor for Obama's decision over Bush's is 10.16. That means that while Bush must shoulder some of the blame for today's Iraq crisis, we must, to be fair, compute the RWF into their respective shares of the blame.
Easily you can see that we must multiply the RWF for Obama and divide it for Bush. So where before Iraq was 52 percent Bush's fault and 48 percent Obama's, applying the RWF respectively yields that Iraq is really 5 percent Bush's fault and 488 percent Obama's.
It is so simple as that. And it's math just as rigorously applied as that of IPCC scientists seeking government grants.
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