More like "Bush was an awful president, but even he had limits."
That might be OP's intention, but they need to say so in the post itself or it's Bush apologia anyway. Also that's true, but having more respect for the imperialist war machine isn't my idea of (good) limits. There are areas where an "imagine being worse than Bush" comparison makes sense, but how much they respect the people doing their imperialism is simply not one of them. Or to put it another way: Hitler wouldn't have been a worse person if he had secretly looked down on the SS.