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Does anyone know where George W. Bush is?
You don't hear much from him anymore. The last image most of us remember is of the president ducking a pair of size 10s that were hurled at him in Baghdad.
We're still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel is thrashing the Palestinians in Gaza. And the U.S. economy is about as vibrant as the 0-16 Detroit Lions.
But hardly a peep have we heard from George, the 43rd.
When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don't think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry - a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches - over the damage he's done to this country.
This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool's gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job.
The Bush administration specialized in deceit. How else could you get the public (and a feckless Congress) to go along with an invasion of Iraq as an absolutely essential response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when Iraq had had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?
Exploiting the public's understandable fears, Mr. Bush made it sound as if Iraq was about to nuke us: "We cannot wait," he said, "for the final proof - the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
He then set the blaze that has continued to rage for nearly six years, consuming more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. (A car bomb over the weekend killed two dozen more Iraqis, many of them religious pilgrims.) The financial cost to the U.S. will eventually reach $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.
A year into the war Mr. Bush was cracking jokes about it at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association. He displayed a series of photos that showed him searching the Oval Office, peering behind curtains and looking under the furniture. A mock caption had Mr. Bush saying: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere."
And then there's the Bush economy, another disaster, a trapdoor through which middle-class Americans can plunge toward the bracing experiences normally reserved for the poor and the destitute.
Mr. Bush traveled the country in the early days of his presidency, promoting his tax cut plans as hugely beneficial to small-business people and families of modest means. This was more deceit. The tax cuts would go overwhelmingly to the very rich.
The president would give the wealthy and the powerful virtually everything they wanted. He would throw sand into the regulatory apparatus and help foster the most extreme income disparities since the years leading up to the Great Depression. Once again he was lighting a fire. This time the flames would engulf the economy and, as with Iraq, bring catastrophe.
If the U.S. were a product line, it would be seen now as deeply damaged goods, subject to recall.
There seemed to be no end to Mr. Bush's talent for destruction. He tried to hand the piggy bank known as Social Security over to the marauders of the financial sector, but saner heads prevailed.
In New Orleans, the president failed to intervene swiftly and decisively to aid the tens of thousands of poor people who were very publicly suffering and, in many cases, dying. He then compounded this colossal failure of leadership by traveling to New Orleans and promising, in a dramatic, floodlit appearance, to spare no effort in rebuilding the flood-torn region and the wrecked lives of the victims.
He went further, vowing to confront the issue of poverty in America "with bold action."
It was all nonsense, of course. He did nothing of the kind.
The catalog of his transgressions against the nation's interests - sins of commission and omission - would keep Mr. Bush in a confessional for the rest of his life. Don't hold your breath. He's hardly the contrite sort.
He told ABC's Charlie Gibson: "I don't spend a lot of time really worrying about short-term history. I guess I don't worry about long-term history, either, since I'm not going to be around to read it."
The president chuckled, thinking - as he did when he made his jokes about the missing weapons of mass destruction - that there was something funny going on.
13 Comments so far
Show AllTell me something I don't already know.
Given his devout misogyny, I can see why it is hard to find GWB. He lives within the uneasy deference of Nancy Pelosi.
The sneer of Cheney lives within the self-importance of Hillary Clinton. We are seen as the pathetic ones.
Mr Herbert gets it all wrong! Bush astutely told us, in the wake of 9/11, that we were attacked for our freedom, our prosperity and our moral goodness. The media, the vast majority of politicians of both parties, and the vast majority of the public enthusiastically agreed. So our government sedulously and effectively went about dismantling our freedom, prosperity and moral goodness to dissuade terrorists. The Bush Administration, by any logical measure once the underlying premises were accepted, has done a brilliant job.
Alex
If an apple an George W. were dropped from a tree at the same time, which would hit the ground first?
George W., if the rope were tied the rope right.
For the man who loves to joke about other peoples suffering, to see him go out like Saddam did would only be appropriate.
Your joke started off pretty well, but I did not understand the ending of it. Should it not be "The apple, as George W. would never hit the ground if the rope were tied right"?
"exploiting the public's understandable fears..."
mr. herbert, the only change to your very fine article would be "exploiting the majority of the american public's stupidity..."
i'm sure the only disappointment bush feels right about now is that his house of cards came tumbling down about five months too early. for that, all of us should be thankful. otherwise, we'd have the beady-eyed maverick and his cheerleading bimbo ready to take over the final act of american history.
mordechai, once again your post leads the way.
theinitiate
Hi everyone. Yes, bush lit a fire alright. The key is for that to be channeled as positively and constructively as possible. In other works, since i have two daughters not yet teenagers, I have to try and develop a path which is going to add to the progressive change necessary. But, yet, at the same time i really feel, more and more every week that the struggle, will be something that most and i meean most people do not expect. The reason is because those in power tend to want to hang on to that power. It has been mind boggling to me how people with power have been soooooooo... block headedselfish and greedy. I mean i have been around all kinds of people in my life. But i foolishly thought that the more education and interaction with people one had, the mind opens and you rise above your own cultural and egoistic obstacles. But it seems that even in this day and age some in power never learned from the past. THis human foible, of pigheaded, inability to adapt ones philosophy of life to be more inclusive and connect more dots when it comes to our time and place in history, has brought me to the conclusion that much more pain may be instore. The evolving human mind and soul is a long drawn out process. In the wake of that, we each will encounter our own dark spot. Let's all work as hard as we can. Concrete change such as green economy and viewing the earth's resources as limited and not to be hoarded by a powerful few, is one way to work. But there are other ways.
Bob____ AMEN to all of your article!! Best sermon I have seen for a long time and cannot disagree with any of it. Now if there were only a good way to fix the damage in a reasonable time. Unfortunately, it is easy to break things up, but not so easy to put them together again. However, this is the only country we have, so we must support the new administration in their efforts to save it.
Does anyone know where George W. Bush is?
He is in the ether, riding his bike, masturbating, watching college football and going "Ooooooooh rah" after every touchdown. He is trying to come up with a title for his memoirs. He likes "War and Peace". Having recently found out it is the title of a classic he was supposed to have read at Yale, he is casting about for another. He is breaking out the legion of bottles of J.T.S. Brown he has had stashed away since his college days and planned to get shitfaced on once he retired. He is looking for a good source for abalone rock coke. He is talking again to the Secret Service agent, the strange one who stares at himself in the restroom mirror and mutters incomprehensibly to himself. Bush had once approached him and asked if it were possible to murder Scott McClellan and get away with it. He is talking to Barney, his dog, about the strange dreams he is having where dead Iraqis have him cornered in an alley and beat the shit out him while his cries for Poppy Bush go unanswered. In other words, George Wanker Bush is where he has always been . . . nowhere.
Maybe he choked on a pretzel again?
One can only hope so.
-- ekaton aka d.k.shaw
Every President, no matter how bad, will have done a few things during their term that will bear fruit after they are gone. We are still suffering from Reagan's largesse.
It was either Bush or someone quoting him that said that things he has done will benefit America in the years to come.
No matter what the calamities of the last eight years, I predict the above statement/quote will be shockingly true in the years to come.
For the next twenty years.
In ways we can not imagine.
In ways that the idiot did not even think about, and will not till they transpire to his benefit.
Therefore it is absolutely critical that we nail his Legacy down NOW and not let him gloat over what becomes right later.
Mordechai's words are a gift to us all.
Love
Zero
Nice piece Bob, but why don't you call for the logical and proper response to the Bush wrecking crew: impeachment hearings in the House (and impeachment can occur after these guys leave office, not just while they're in office), and/or (because neither one is immune from prosecution once out of office), the appointment of a special prosecutor charged with looking into which laws have been violated and with bringing indictments where appropriate?
Why this half measure?
What we need to fix the mess that eight years of Bush/Cheney abuses of power and outright criminality, together with eight years of abject surrender of Constitutional power and responsibility by the Congress, is not hooting, hollering and car horns blaring, but punishment, so that no future president will attempt the same kinds of behavior.
Dave Lindorff
Author: "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006), a book that not one mainstream newspaper ever reviewed or even mentioned.
Visit Dave Lindorff's website at www.thiscantbehappening.net