Seven-and-a-half years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, the U.S. military is focusing again on the perpetrators and their support networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

President Obama's decision to send 21,000 more American forces there by the fall will bring the total to more than 60,000 to wage the necessary war that was shortchanged in George W. Bush's reckless war of choice in Iraq.

Because that unnecessary 2003 diversion shattered the international backing for justifiable retribution against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, it will be much harder now to get such help for the job that should have been finished first.

It's often said that only with the passing of time can historians make valid judgments on the lasting legacies of world leaders. Bush supporters cling to that view in arguing that eventually the 43rd president will be appreciated for what he did in the White House.

But what has already been wrought by starting one war based on flawed and deceptive assumptions and propaganda, when he hadn't dealt definitively with the one already on his plate, is clear enough already to settle his place in history.

Although six years of bloodshed and havoc in Iraq have cost more than 4,000 American lives, tens of thousands more Americans wounded and many more Iraqis in both categories, the Iraq war is being claimed by Bush stalwarts as having been "won." Yet it continues to impose heavy burdens on the U.S. military as Obama manages the withdrawal he promised, while shifting attention at last to the original front in the so-called war on terrorism.

Beyond the damage Bush inflicted on America's good standing in the world and the very tangible costs of his Iraq misadventure, his White House years have left Obama with such a host of headaches at home and abroad that his own ambitious agenda as president may never get off the ground, at least in one term.

Indeed, his determination to press on with his long-range objectives of reform in healthcare, education, energy and environmental policy could well cripple his immediate challenge to cope with a raging financial and economic crisis to which Bush neglect also contributed.

In the first weeks of the Obama presidency, one inevitable yardstick of his performance has been a comparison with Bush in substance and style. Obama's unusually high poll ratings indicate the appeal of his pragmatic rather than ideological approach, and of his unflappable and good-humored persona. They are obvious contrasts to Bush's rigidity and flippant way, often bordering on arrogance.

To be sure, Bush in his first weeks in the Oval Office also enjoyed very high public ratings. They soared with the advent of the 9/11 attacks that mobilized support at home and abroad for a new self-declared "war president."

But the manner in which his war in Iraq and its calamitous aftermath eventually eroded that backing left him with a deplorable presidential legacy well before the passage of time usually required for historians to make their assessment.

Many such historians have contended over the years that no president can fairly be judged unless he has been severely tested by major crisis during his tenure. The recently departed Bush already qualifies as having been greatly tested by virtue of 9/11 and his response to it. Obama already qualifies too, thanks in considerable degree to Bush's decisions that have left him with such a heavy dose of crisis management.

The war in Afghanistan, it's true, was not of Obama's making as the Iraq war was Bush's. But how it turns out inevitably with have much to do with Obama's own eventual legacy, along with how he copes with the Wall Street crisis dumped in his lap.

Reach Jules Witcover at (Unknown address).

Reach Jules Witcover at juleswitcover@earthlink.net.