I liked George W. Bush. I know this is a blasphemous thing to admit nowadays. The anti-Bush faith continues to flourish. Indeed, I didn’t like every single thing he did. But with the release of his new memoir Decision Points, it’s timely to elaborate my defence of him and his administration.

George W. Bush signed the USA PATRIOT Act, empowering the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate the defence against terrorism. There’s no doubt that the PATROT Act helped prevent any ensuing domestic terrorist attacks after 9/11. It allowed the Bush administration to freeze the assets of dozens of terrorist organizations. It allowed law enforcement to use roving wiretaps on suspected terrorists. Previously these wiretaps were perfectly legal when used on drug dealers, but not on terrorists, America’s worst enemies.

Bush also takes a lot of flak for his decision to authorize enhanced interrogation. Those tactics are vital, and save lives. There is no doubt of this conclusion. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey suggested that almost half of American intelligence on al-Qaeda came from those techniques. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the “mastermind” of 9/11, released a treasure trove of information after he was interrogated.

Enhanced interrogation is not necessarily torture. The legal argument put forward by the United States government, the idea that torture should be more closely linked to the idea of long term harm, is compelling.

The fact is that those techniques work, and they wouldn’t be controversial if they didn’t. Corroborated with other sources, information extracted under interrogation can be powerful. Former army intelligence officer Rick Francona once suggested that the combination of isolating an inmate and keeping them in the dark produced workable intelligence within three days, on average.

There’s no doubt that techniques like the “stress position” are extremely coercive. They’re not the techniques that anyone is keen on using. If politely asking al-Qaeda’s zealots to give up information worked, I would support it. The problem is that it doesn’t. Lives have been saved because of what enhanced interrogation has accomplished.

Then we come to Iraq. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know American intelligence was wrong about Iraq. There were no weapons of mass destruction. But hindsight is irrelevant. Bush had in front of him intelligence from not only the CIA, but also MI6 and other leading sources that Saddam Hussein had these weapons.

We still aren’t capable of objectively assessing George W. Bush’s presidency, and we won’t be for a long time. The anti-Bush crowd which claims this ability to do so is wrong. Hatred of the former president is irrational. The decisions mentioned above and in Bush’s memoir represent only a fraction of the Bush presidency, but an important one. Someday, we will better know how effective of a president he was. Until then, he’ll continue to be demonized by those who understand so little about him and the choices he made.