 Let us return to the controversies surrounding Strauss and his work, mentioned above. The claim that Strauss is in some way responsible for the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq has little merit. As should be clear from the above, Strauss’s work does not concern policy issues of any sort. If others have adapted his philosophical ideas in the pursuit of policy questions, they themselves are responsible for those policy decisions, not Strauss. Morever, few, if any, real arguments have been advanced that conclude Bush administration policy makers who studied with Strauss’s students ever consciously applied his ideas when making decisions concerning the war in Iraq. In the context of such claims about Strauss’s influence on the Bush administration’s policies on Iraq and the Middle East more generally, there is an irony, namely, that Strauss himself was devoted to revitalizing Islamic philosophy, as opposed to Christian thought, for the very sake of the future of western civilization.