Since former President George W. Bush left the White House, he has led a mostly quiet post-presidency. But after six years into the Obama presidency, Bush broke that silence at a closed-door meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas. According to attendees at the event, Bush never outright criticized his successor, but he did say how the George W. Bush administration would have handled today’s world events.

First, Bush questioned if Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is actually the reformer the Obama administration thinks he is. Bush said of Rouhani, “He’s smooth. And you’ve got to ask yourself, is there a new policy or did they just change the spokesman?” About the nuclear negotiations with Iran, Bush added, “You think the Middle East is chaotic now? Imagine what it looks like for our grandchildren. That’s how Americans should view the deal.” Secondly, Bush turned to the Islamic State. The group is merely the second iteration of al-Qaida, he said, and the U.S. needs a plan to bring about its defeat. “When the plan wasn’t working in Iraq, we changed,” Bush said. Third, as for Vladimir Putin, Bush said the Russian president is divorced, obsessed with power and loved because he controls the Russian media. Furthermore, Bloomberg View reported that Bush went on to tell about the time when Vladimir Putin told Bush that his dog was better than Bush’s, showing that Putin doesn’t think in terms of win-win situations, Bush said.

Instead of a clear foreign policy, we have an administration that goes back on red lines, disses Israel to court Iran and touts a deteriorating Yemen as its counter-terrorism foreign policy success story. More…