George W. Bush: Be Patient With Iraq

Great ally to have, Obama.

Former President George W. Bush said Thursday that America must remain vigilant in the fight against Islamic terrorism because a healthy democracy may take decades to take root in Iraq.

"I know the nature of the enemy. Anybody who kills 3,000 innocents and beheads people because of their religion or because of their point of view is dangerous, and there is a short-term strategy which is to bring them to justice and a long-term strategy which is to encourage free societies to prevail so as to marginalize their ideology," Bush said in an interview with Fox News.

"The long-term strategy takes time," he added. "And I tell people all the time, off the record, by the way, that [former Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice's relatives were enslaved in the greatest democracy ever for 100 years, and democracy takes time to take hold. And yet there is an impatience with that process, and Americans have got to understand that the lesson of 9/11 is still important today as it was right after 9/11, and that is the human condition elsewhere matters to our national security."