How come it has taken almost three years for an authoritative analysis of President Bush’s War on Terror strategy to edge into today’s marketplace of ideas? Could it be because it runs counter to today’s public opinion – and elite opinion – on Bush?

   A paperback version of “Surprise, Security and the American Experience” by Prof. John Lewis Gaddis of Yale University is now available (with some effort). In it he states that there have been three “grand strategies” in the nation’s history and their authors are John Quincy Adams, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and George W. Bush. Huh?

   Gaddis is a historian who is called the dean of Cold War studies and was described in a Boston Globe review (remember that the Globe is a New York Times property) as “one of the nation’s most eminent diplomatic historians.”

   Some local academic historians say that Gaddis has a reputation as a heavyweight expert and his texts on the Cold War are used in many classes. The “grand strategy” book seems not to have made it to their radar screens, however. Hmm.

   What Gaddis says in his book is terribly pertinent to today’s bitter debate over the Iraq part of the War on Terror. They are all of one piece, he believes, and came about in response to the horror imposed on the country by 9/11. But instead of just reacting, as President Clinton did with cruise missiles, President Bush set the country on a new course of defeating terror with the democratization of the Middle East, efforts to keep rogue states and terrorists from getting nuclear weapons, and working outside the traditional international system, if necessary.

   Gaddis calls the UN “outmoded” and just a “snapshot of the configuration of power that existed in 1945.”

   Bush’s reaction to 9/11 could not have been predicted. A seemingly pleasant but lightweight president, Gaddis believes, decided that co-existing with terror was not an option. It should be attacked in every possible way if freedom and true peace and prosperity were to be possible in the future.

   John Quincy Adams, secretary of state to President James Monroe, set the national expansion in motion after the Louisiana Purchase in order to fill a perceived power vacuum to the south and west that hostile states might try to take advantage of. FDR moved the country past isolationism and (with follow-up by Truman) set the stage for the Cold War opposing Soviet expansionism.

   Gaddis agrees that Bush has made many mistakes along his two-term way, but as a historian knows that mistakes are part of almost every big national endeavor. What’s important is that Bush sees the long view far past his presidency. That view, the “grand strategy,” is to face up to and defeat terrorism, not just fuss defensively with it when it sees an opportunity to strike us, and kill us, at home.

   William H Wild is a retired newspaper editor and contributing columnist. He resides in Oakwood, Ohio.