I watched Bush last night on the news strutting his stuff in Israel and wondered how it is possible that he could be so delusional as to think that his rhetoric about peace in the Middle East is going to create the sort of legacy that any world leader would want as he prepares to leave office over the coming year.

Then I went out to dinner and someone started talking about John Howard and the shambles that he left in this country, and how the healing has begun. Yes. Its true. The healing has begun. And regardless of the positive that Howard did during his period in office and regardless of the shambles he may have inherited he ultimately was an incredibly divisive Prime Minister. It isn't about the party he belonged to. It is about the quality of the human being…. just like it is everywhere. Bush is no different – an unbelievably divisive person.

And then I read a piece of writing this morning written by Chris Hedges who was at one time the Middle East Bureau Chief at the New York Times. It captures perfectly the way that the thinking world sees things. It is also something that four or five years ago I would never have imagined anyone in the US would have written about the President of the United States. Americans are so respectful of their elected leaders. The writing is remarkable for not just what it says, but the way that it says it.

Please read the whole thing. Here is an excerpt:

The Gilbert and Sullivan charade of statesmanship played out by
George W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the
Middle East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule.  Despots
stripped of power are transformed from monsters into buffoons.  And
this is the metamorphosis that is eating away at the Bush presidency. 

Bush stood in Jerusalem,
uncomfortable and palpably bored.  He mouthed platitudes about a peace
settlement that mocked the humanitarian crisis he aided and abetted in
Gaza, the rapacious land grab by Israel in the West Bank and the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The diminished George Bush, increasingly
irrelevant at home and abroad, is fading into insignificance.  A year
from now one half expects to see him stand up at the next president’s
inauguration and screech “I’m melting!  I’m melting!” as he sinks into
a puddle of slime.  He will return, I expect, to his ranch, where he
will be able to spend the rest of his life doing the only task for
which he has shown any aptitude—cutting down brush with a chain saw. 

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