The New Year is a time for resolutions, for looking back and, well, deciding to maybe do a few things differently. It's a good thing George W. Bush's tenure is over because, judging from his last press conference, he wouldn't change a thing about his eight years in office. No New Years -- or any other kind of resolutions for the man who presided over two disastrous wars, a deadly non-response to global warming and hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and who oversaw the unraveling of the American economy, benefiting a few, and bankrupting the rest.

Bush's only solace—remember he doesn't drink anymore—appears to be the long view. He told reporters that, “there is no such thing as short term history.” In Bush's world, which we learned a few years ago is not the same reality based world that the rest of us live in, history may not exist at all.

Sure, he made a few mistakes. The Mission Accomplished banner was a bad idea; he should have visited New Orleans sooner; Abu Ghraib was a “huge disappointment;” and the failure to find WMD in Iraq was “a significant disappointment.”

I don't think "disappointment" is the word the forty-one Marines who committed suicide this year would have used to describe the war in Iraq. The headline in today's LA Times reads: Marine suicides in 2008 at a yearly high since Iraq invasion. The suicide rate among active duty Marines is at its highest since the war in Iraq began.

Bush's colleagues often talked about making reality: and contrasted themselves with the reality based community. As Bush leaves office he seems entirely out of touch with real life still. But for hundreds of thousands of military families, and millions of people across the world, there's no period at the end of the Bush sentence. Indeed, Bush has sentenced millions of people to a lifetime of loss, of damaged lives, that will endure into future generations. Bush made a reality for sure. Now they have to live in it.