Has the final word been written on the legacy of U.S. President George W. Bush? (Ron Edmonds/Associated Press)

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A snapshot of the world on Sept. 12, 2001, would have revealed the following: an Iraq led by a brutal dictator defying UN inspectors and seeming to be on the verge of recreating a military program involving weapons of mass destruction; a strong and thriving terrorist network, supported by a Taliban-governed Afghanistan, celebrating the launch of the deadliest attack on U.S. soil; and Americans bracing for what most believed would be an inevitable second strike.

Taking that same snapshot more than seven years later, the world's landscape has changed dramatically. Iraq and Afghanistan have become burgeoning, albeit troubled, democracies and strategic allies of the United States.

That same terrorist network has been severely crippled and, what would have been unthinkable earlier, America has gone nearly 2,600 days since the collapse of the Twin Towers without a single attack on its soil.

It is a geopolitical reality that many academics, historians and pundits seem to ignore as they question not whether George W. Bush was a bad president (to them, that's a given) but whether he is the worst U.S. president in history.

Bush's Canadian legacy

According to surveys on this side of the border, Canadians have a particular dislike for Bush, although his "Canadian legacy" might be considered mixed.

U.S. President George W. Bush signed a nuclear power accord with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi in March 2006. (Charles Dharapak/Associated Press)

While his security controls on the border led to hassles for business commuters and travellers, he supported free trade (something successor Barack Obama has openly questioned), helped secure the softwood lumber deal and supported the lifting of the U.S. ban on Canadian cattle during the mad-cow scare.

But it's foreign policy on which most presidents are judged and it's Bush's so-called war on terror that supporters and detractors agree his legacy will be based on.

Many agree that Bush can proudly boast some foreign policy triumphs, pointing to his administration's success in forging closer ties with China, Japan and Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim state.

In that context, he also strengthened relations with India, achieved in part by Washington opening the door to civilian nuclear co-operation between the two countries.

That move could well lay the groundwork for India becoming a more inclusive partner in the fight against Islamic terrorism or, at the very least, becoming an important strategic balance, militarily and economically, as China continues to rise.

That opening to India "may turn out to be the most significant foreign policy achievement of the Bush administration," historian Sugata Bose, an India expert at Harvard, told the Weekly Standard.

Even some of Bush's most ardent critics praise his work in Africa on AIDS. His five-year emergency plan, according to the latest figures from USAID, has been responsible for delivering anti-viral treatment to more than two million people in Africa — a huge increase from the 50,000 treated in 2003.

The war on terror

Those accolades have been largely overshadowed by the focus on Bush's war on terror, which will rightly be the most enduring feature of the 43rd U.S. president's legacy.

Following the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush quickly moved to change the way Washington dealt with terrorism.

No longer would the U.S. rely on, as he saw it, a reactive law-enforcement approach in which FBI agents would try to bring perpetrators of attacks to justice. The U.S. would instead employ a pre-emptive, more offensive strategy by going after states suspected of sponsoring terrorists.

A soldier of the Afghan National Army stands guard during a patrol in Musa Qala, Afghanistan, in December 2007. (Rafiq Maqbool/Associated Press)

As al-Qaeda's host, Afghanistan was the natural first target. NATO forces were able to overthrow the regime within months and put in place a Western-friendly leader, who eventually became the first democratically elected president of the country.

That means little to those who look at Afghanistan today and see a country still riddled with poverty, corruption, rising opium production, a presidency with little power and a resurgent Taliban.

Yet there have been important, if fragile, achievements in Afghanistan over the past few years — more widespread schooling, regional government, a more professional army — that hold out at least some hope for the future.

Then there is Iraq

For most critics, though, it all comes down to Iraq. With no weapons of mass destruction found, more than 4,000 American soldiers dead and thousands more Iraqis killed, the invasion is viewed by many as the black spot on Bush's legacy and the main source of his failure as a president.

Saddam Hussein stands trial in Baghdad in December 2005. (David Furst/Associated Press)

Most forget or ignore the headache Iraq posed for former president Bill Clinton: he ordered four days of bombing in 1998 when Saddam Hussein refused to comply with weapons inspections.

The rhetoric back then from both Republicans and Democrats was that action was needed to deal with the threat posed by Saddam, who everyone assumed had WMDs.

It was under that pretext, compounded by heightened security fears in a post-Sept. 11 world, that Bush invaded Iraq. The reasoning was that even if Saddam wasn't responsible for the attacks, his WMD programs could be used against the U.S., or its allies in the region like Israel, either by Iraq itself or a terrorist organization with similar intentions.

Of course, after the U.S. invasion was launched in 2003, no WMDs were found. The fact that the report by Charles Duelfer of the Iraq Survey Group in 2004 found that "Saddam wanted to recreate his WMD capability" and "aspired to develop a nuclear capability" went over the heads of most critics.

Absolute chaos

Even supporters of the invasion slammed how the U.S. occupation of Iraq was carried out and watched in horror as the country plunged into violent chaos while the American death toll increased.

Although some will argue Iraq was never intended to be the central front in the war on terror, it certainly became that as Islamic fundamentalists of different stripes flocked to the region to wage a brutal insurgency against the U.S.

Still, last spring, when things were at their bleakest, Bush ordered a surge in troops. The results, combined with an awakening Sunni movement, saw a huge local revolt against insurgents and turned the tide in the war as violence plummeted.

Today, Iraq has a badly functioning but still democratically elected government and GDP per capita higher than it was before the war. According to the Brookings Institute, Iraqis now have more cars and better access to phones, internet service and media outlets than before.

All achievements to be sure, although little comfort to the families of the tens of thousands killed and injured in the violence.

But in cold, geopolitical terms, it's the outcome of a war that marks its success or failure — as evidenced by the lasting affinity for former presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In Iraq, more than 4,000 Americans have been killed in a war where a victory of sorts looks now to be achievable.

Compare that to the Korean War, which saw the deaths of more than 33,000 Americans — many of them drafted — and a stalemate. Nearly double that number of soldiers died in Vietnam under the presidencies of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.

Should Iraq transform itself into a stable democracy in coming years and become, if not an ally at least not a sworn enemy of the West and all it stands for, some may have to rethink the true legacy of George W. Bush.