Bush's foreign policy legacy not without merits

George W. Bush now has less than 100 days left before he packs up and leaves the White House, while the country takes stock of his presidency, particularly in terms of foreign relations, to see what kind of a legacy he is leaving behind.

President Bush launched the war in Afghanistan less than two weeks after the September 11 incident and then extended US firepower to Iraq in 2003. If the Afghan War managed to win understanding from the rest of the world, invading Iraq without legal or moral support only proved an extreme example of the US' unilateralism and aptness to launch preemptive strikes against another independent state.

The war in Iraq threatened to split the alliance between the US and its European allies and eroded the US' moral integrity as it dragged on. It also cost the country several hundred million dollars a day in addition to more than 4,000 US troops killed there. Today over 100,000 American military members remain in Iraq and there is no sign the war will end any time soon.