Dec 06
16
Bush – The Legacy President
We think that we are disassociated from political leaders. We think that our countries and our cultures and lifestyles continue regardless, with a momentum separate from the mistakes of politicians and the tragedies of their decisions. But that is not correct.
If we do not take matters personally and respond actively, whether at the ballot or by continuing to raise awareness, we should accept the consequences. The consequences include not just increased terrorist risk, but the increasing negative impact on the country's current account through the increasing military expenditure required. All of which comes out of the citizenry's back pockets.
In Australia, we have a Prime Minister and a ruling party that continues to slavishly follow Bush. I don't understand why this is so. But the fact remains that it is. And it is clear from all one reads that Bush is intent on 'staying the course' whatever that means, regardless of the fact that the American people voted resoundingly against the war in Iraq.
It seems that Bush is now planning one last big push in Iraq, mobilizing tens of thousands of American reservists, to create a PR win in Baghdad, so that he can then, once again, declare something or other and then pull back. What that means, if true, is that tens of thousands of ill-prepared weekend warriors will be put in harms way. Many of them will return wounded psychologically or physically. Many will become polluted by DU. Many will die. For what? To enable Bush to have a lasting legacy as a president? Well, that much is true. He will.
A great OpEd piece from Joseph Galloway was published this week. Read it in full at the link…. but the sting was in the last few paragraphs. Here they are:
James Baker was sent to Washington by the original George Bush, No. 41,
to salvage something out of the mess that his son, Bush No. 43, has
made of his presidency and the world. The Baker Commission labored
mightily and produced, if little else, some truth: That the situation
in Iraq is dire and rapidly growing worse.
It's also clear, however, that Bush the son is paying no more
than lip service to the Baker report. He doesn't want Dad’s help, and
the idea that he once again needs to be rescued from the consequences
of his mistakes – as he had to be so often back in Texas – can only
have hardened his resolve to stay the course.
This is akin to a drowning man who pushes away a life preserver
just before he sinks for the last time. Can nothing save this man from
himself – from the voices that only he hears telling him that he, like
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, will have his
reputation and his place in American history restored and burnished
long after his death?
What will happen to that impossible dream in the coming year if
the congressional Democrats begin to do their job, issuing subpoenas
and holding oversight hearings into the looting of billions from the
national treasury by defense contractors and other fat-cat donors to
the Republican Party?
What will happen if everything that George Bush does to string
things along in Iraq fails, as has everything else he's done there so
far, and the Iraqis ask, order or drive us out of their country?
Did you notice that at every stop on the President’s
information-gathering tour this week, there was a very familiar face
looming over his shoulder? There was Vice President Dick Cheney,
looking as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking
chairs.
Should the president suddenly have an original thought or seem
to be going wobbly, Cheney will be right there to squelch it or to set
him straight.
It can be argued that George W. Bush understood little about
war and peace and diplomacy and honesty in government. Cheney
understood all of it, and he bears much of the responsibility for
what's gone on in Washington, D.C. and in Iraq for the last six years.
Keep a sharp eye on him. Desperate men do desperate things.