By Denis Campbell
When W. Bush was selected President in 2000, I shrugged and assumed this a natural part of the pendulum’s swing to the right. Now, the release of a two-page talking points memo to rehabilitate his presidential image has me sputtering mad at the whitewash this White House continues to apply to try and change history and their woeful legacy.
After 9-11, two wars, unprecedented power grabs, shredding of the Constitution and the sheer lunacy of the last eight years, I tried to apologise for my country and realised after these eight years, we were all globally, royally screwed. At 40 days remaining, I also realised that the great flood of Noah’s time was that long and want him gone before the entire global economy is underwater.
A decade ago I was new to the EU, the Bill Clinton era was winding down, paralysed by Special Prosecutor investigations and an impeachment scandal. We were all suffering from Clinton (as we now suffer from bailout) fatigue, and were tired of “Slick Willie’s” scandal du jour. Now, after a gruelling two year campaign, we are fatigued with political games and politics as usual in Washington.
My Republican friends referred in 1998 to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as “The Dark House” spouting all sorts of Gingrich inspired patriotic pabulum about taking back and “bringing honour to” the White House (along with another era of tax cuts and pork to the world).
After 9-11 we were uniformly beloved and the global empathy for loss of life was well and truly felt. The cynical power grab that created the Patriot Act, Gitmo, the environment for torture and universal thumbing of our nose at both the rule of law and called the Geneva Convention “quaint” was just the beginning.
The country sped down a long slippery slope. I’ll let Keith Olbermann’s brilliant commentary of last evening take it from here as he discusses the SPIN memo point by point…
Mr. Bush promised to raise standards and performance in public schools bringing us “The no child left behind” act, so poorly received, it became a standard applause line for Democrats.
The memo says he curbed the spread of AIDS in Africa. Its spread has slowed and Mr. Bush but has not won praise from groups that propose condom use, a proven life saver, in favour of abstinence only programs which have also failed in this country.
Bush’s foreign aid puritan Randall Tobias, quit last year after patronising an escort service linked to prostitution.
The memos says: “Mr. Bush lifted the economy with his tax cuts and “responded with bold measures to prevent an economic meltdown.”
In 2005 Mr. Bush told a 57-year old single mother of three, one of them mentally challenged that it was “fantastic, uniquely American that she had to work three jobs unlike half a million Americans who have no job as of November in the first Presidency in decades where family earning power fell and disparity continued to rise. The meltdown he prevented now having claimed several Wall Street institutions which had weathered 1929 and 9-11 but not “43.”
The old stand-by – “He kept the American people safe.”
Not counting the 20% from inauguration to 9-11. On 9-11 he kept reading My Pet Goat for 7-minutes after learning the US was under attack, covered up the environmental risks at ground zero and failed to provide for the health of rescue workers, he helped bin Laden’s family flee the country, opposed the 9-11 commission, opposed the department of Homeland Security, tried to outsource America’s port security to Dubai, did not keep us safe from the shoe bomber (alert passengers and crew did that), did not keep five Americans safe from anthrax and never caught their killer, still has not caught the killer of 17 sailors aboard the USS Cole, still has not caught the killer of 3,000 on 9-11 (Osama bin Laden) – outsourcing that to Afghans and turning that country into a narco-state giving bin Laden a safe haven in the region of Waziristan by literally endorsing a truce that Pakistan signed with the Taleban there.
And most of all not keeping safe 4,200 Americans dead in his war, a war that made us less safe, invading a country that posed no grave or gathering threat, provided a check on Iran, then inciting insurrection by disbanding the Baathist Party, creating a Muslim theocracy purged of its moderate intelligentsia, one in which freedom has marched backward for women and Lebanon too elected a Muslim theocracy, run by Hamas no less.
Keeping us safe?
Terrorism is rising worldwide. The still thriving enemy has claimed Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto, and thousands of people in India including 200 in Mumbai just last months. Russia can invade US allies without fear of retribution. And Mr. Bush failed to prevent Kim Jong Il from joining the ranks of nuclear powers.
Despite even more ample warning that he received prior to 9-11 he lifted not a finger to keep a major American city safe from wind and water (during Katrina).
And what from the talking points do we make when Mr. Bush says he has always upheld the “honour and dignity of his office.”
You must define dignity downward to find it in a lie.
The lie of Mission Accomplished, of upholding the Constitution while protecting habeas corpus, that we do not eavesdrop without warrants, we do not eavesdrop on Americans, the lie that we do not torture, that we do not play politics with justice that we do not use the wheels of justice to crush dissent (firing of DOJ Special attorneys), that we do not betray those (Valerie Plame’s CIA status outed) who serve us in secret, that we uphold rather than commute the penalty for those who do (Cheney Chief of staff Scooter Libby), that we do not stage fake news conferences, do not censor science, do not plant propaganda in Iraqi newspapers, nor pay US columnists to write it in American newspapers.
Or push respected Americans to vaporise their honour and dignity with likes to the world (Colin Powell). Or lie about the causes of the credit crisis, high gas prices or even that he watched the first plane hit the north tower on TV.
Were is the honour avowing a crusade of daring those who would kill American troops to “bring it on”? Or promising to care for the troops after you put them in harm’s way without body armour or up-armoured vehicles? Where was the honour, the dignity in giving a dead soldier’s mother a Presidential coin and telling her, “don’t sell it on e-bay.”
The memo reveals another lie, he does care how history will portray him and now he knows.
