Chapter Two

KING GEORGE AND KING GEORGE

“A traitor is everyone who does not agree with me.”

King George III, (1738-1820)

“If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”

President George W. Bush, 12/19/00, 07/27/01, 12/18/02

It is easy to suppose that a monarch like King George III would expect fealty from his subjects, as he so expressed.  In fact, that expectation was one of many reasons that his colonists in America felt compelled to break away from England and start a new nation.  Thus, it’s paradoxical that over 200 hundred years later, a president of that new nation would utter the patently undemocratic and impolitic remark that Bush did, even in jest.  What is noteworthy about the quote from Mr. Bush, is that there were at least three different documented times he said the same thing, nearly word-for-word in public.

Neither George W. Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney, to anyone’s knowledge, went as far as George III did, by accusing anyone of being a traitor for not agreeing with them, but they did come uncomfortably close.  They said, or implied, that anyone who does not fully agree with them is not a “patriot,” with the unstated insinuation that if one is not a patriot, then one must therefore be the political antonym—a traitor.  It was particularly prevalent in the post-9/11 run-up to the invasion of Iraq, and in the post-invasion debate about maintaining troops in that country.  Unfortunately, we’ve been down this road before.

“To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying:  ‘Our country, right or wrong,’ and urge on the little war.  Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?”

Mark Twain, (1835-1910)

It was the same patriotic fervor, but it was a different trumped-up war—the Spanish-American War, engineered in part by a newspaper battle between William Randolph Hearst’s the New...

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Chapter Three

THE WAR ON TERROR

“When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were.  It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was.  Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.”

                      George W. Bush, 01/21/00 

“This is still a dangerous world.  It’s a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mential losses.”

George W. Bush, as quoted in the Financial Times, 01/14/00

“Here comes the great orator!  With his flood of words and his drop of reason.”

Benjamin Franklin, (1706-1790)

       For some time now, this country has taken a militaristic approach in describing or even addressing intractable nonmilitary problems.  We have the never ending “War on Drugs” and its attendant “Drug Czar,” even though the title implies that “Drug Czar” might more properly be the nickname of a drug kingpin, not someone who is overseeing a government effort to stop the flow of illegal drugs into this country and the abuse of those drugs.  Still, the U.S. has actually employed the military in the War on Drugs, sending combat and intelligence units to Columbia for instance, to help that country in cocaine eradication and interdiction campaigns.  Coast Guard assets spend a lot of time patrolling our country’s coastlines, looking for boats and small planes carrying illegal drugs.

President Bush, however, preferred to not fight the War on Drugs.  Like so many other policies and programs, Bush talked a great game, but rarely, if ever, delivered either on promise or presumed intent.  He talked about the scourge of drug abuse and drug traffickers “who pollute our youth,” but his inaction speaks far louder than his misappropriated words.  In fact, the policies of President George W. Bush actually markedly increased the drug problem, as treated in detail in the next chapter “Afghanistan.”  The Bush Administration continued past practice by treating...

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Chapter Four

AFGHANISTAN

“These people don’t have tanks.  They don’t have ships.   They hide in caves.  They send suiciders out.”

George W. Bush in a speech about terrorists

in Afghanistan, 11/01/02

“There’s no cave deep enough for America, or dark enough to hide.”

George W. Bush in a speech about terrorists

in Afghanistan, 08/29/02

The decision to root out terrorists in Afghanistan was a sound and necessary response, propelled by universal national revulsion over the 9/11 attacks that leveled the Twin Towers in New York City, and badly damaged the very symbol of U.S. military supremacy, the Pentagon.  That decision received broad international endorsement, unlike the decision to invade Iraq.  The attack on the heart of America’s financial district and on its military nerve center was interpreted as an attack on many nations.

The Taliban, a repressive fundamentalist regime, had already been accused of brutal acts and of harboring elements of a group that not many Americans had heard of until 9/11—Al Qaeda and its leader, Saudi exile, Osama bin Laden.  Yes, some of the American media had been reporting on bin Laden’s violent “career” for a few years, but he was largely ignored by the American public or viewed as some sort of curiosity, just another lunatic.

The U.S. military was issued orders to find bin Laden and destroy his terrorist cells and training camps, many of them located in the rugged hills and caves of eastern Afghanistan, but it wasn’t given nearly enough manpower to execute the mission.  There was also a long pregnant pause of two months before the order was finally given.  The terrorist operations spilled over the border into a large inhospitable region of northwestern Pakistan, which the military government of Pervez Musharraf had been unable to control.

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Chapter Five

FINDING OSAMA

“The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden.  It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him.”

George W. Bush 09/13/01

“I don’t know where bin Laden is.  I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important.  It’s not our priority.”

George W. Bush 03/13/02

In the time span of a mere six months to the day, President George W. Bush dismissed as irrelevant, Osama bin Laden, who was, and as of this writing, still is on the FBI’s “10 Most Wanted” list.  The man who Bush himself described as Public Enemy Number One just two days after the worst attack in history on the U.S. mainland, the terrorist who has a $25 million bounty on his head, quickly disappeared off the Bush radar screen.  Coincidentally, there was a Disney/Pixar animated movie playing in theaters nationwide at about the same time that Bush was dismissing bin Laden as “not our priority.”  In a juxtaposition of absurdities, Finding Nemo became more significant to the nation than finding Osama.

WHO IS THIS GUY?

Many Americans had never heard of Osama bin Laden until 9/11 occurred, and if they had, they seemed unconcerned.  He was just another crazed Arab with a grudge against the United States.  Bin Laden was put on the FBI’s “10 Most Wanted” list in June 1999, nearly one year after the attacks on two U.S. Embassies in Africa.  American intelligence traced the planning to bin Laden, who was also wanted in connection with other attacks on U.S. targets, going all the way back to the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

Sometime in 1988, bin Laden formed what has evolved into the shadowy and very dangerous transnational group he called Al...

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Chapter Six

THE PHONY TOUGH

“There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there.  My answer is—bring it on.”

George W. Bush, speaking about Iraqi insurgents, 07/03/03

“At the age of four, with paper hats and wooden swords, we’re all generals.  Only some of us never grow out of it.”

Peter Ustinov, (1921-2004)

The invasion of Iraq quickly turned from “Mission Accomplished” into what some experts and observers predicted would happen—a guerilla war.  The insurgency in Iraq exploded, thanks to incredibly inept planning, or more precisely, the lack of planning for what would happen after “Shock and Awe.”  Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was peddling an untried and unproven theory of military minimalism, directed the show.  It was his baby.  He’d been itching to get his hands on the most powerful military in the world and execute some kind of macabre redemption for the humiliating loss in Vietnam.

George W. Bush, who walked with a swagger à la John Wayne, elbows bowed out, as if he had to have arm clearance for a couple of Colt “peacemakers” strapped to his hips, uttered his “bring it on” taunt during a televised news briefing.  He certainly did not sound like a statesman, but then again, did he ever?  Bush came across more like a schoolyard bully.

“A bully is always a coward.”

Early 19^th Century proverb

A truly brave man lets his actions speak for themselves.  When he had the chance to serve his country in action, Bush bowed out.  He was no less a chicken hawk than all the other chicken hawks in his administration.  Most of them never wore a uniform, although he did, serving abortively in the Texas Air National Guard.  Yet, when it came time to step up and ship out, Bush packed up and hid out inside someone’s political campaign.

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Chapter Seven

IRAQ

“The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a tragedy…for Iraq, for the U.S., for the U.N., for truth and human dignity.”

Hans Blix, former Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector in an op-ed

article in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, 03/20/08

“So?”

Vice President Dick Cheney after an ABC reporter told

him that polls show most Americans now thought the

Iraq War was not worth fighting, 03/19/08

The Iraq War is not only the signature failure of the presidential administration of George W. Bush and the ignominy for which it will forever be known, it is also a permanent festering wound inflicted on the reputation of the United States.  Coupled with the torture of “illegal enemy combatants” in violation of U.S. law and international treaties, the war in Iraq has seriously tarnished, even obscured whatever positive acts or accomplishments this nation has ever achieved, and made irrelevant all of the past policy declarations that encouraged other countries to respect human rights, strive for ethical values, observe and uphold international agreements and honor the sovereignty of other nations.

For now and for all time, Bush’s War will be known as the most glaring example of what can happen in the best of democracies, what did happen in the United States, when unchecked and unchallenged ideological power runs amok.

“A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means

and bad men.”

Thomas Paine, (1737-1809)

Bush’s War in Iraq will remain the worst example of a bad cause supported by bad means and by bad men, but only if steps are taken to correct the imbalance of power that allowed it to happen, to prevent it from ever happening again, and certainly to prevent something even worse from occurring.  If the will of the American people is not asserted to do so, then perhaps Bush’s War will...

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Chapter Eight

SPREADING THE POX

“You see, the best way to defeat a society that is…doesn’t have hope, a society where people become so angry they’re willing to become suiciders, is to spread freedom, is to spread democracy.”

George W. Bush, 06/08/05

“The world must be made safe for democracy.”

Woodrow Wilson, (1856-1924)

“Making the world safe for hypocrisy.”

Thomas Wolfe, (1900-1938) from Look Homeward Angel

The many aspects and consequences of the spectacular failure in Iraq, for which George W. Bush will be known for all time, was certainly not confined to within the troubled country’s borders.  Bush’s false idealism, his so-called plan to “spread freedom…to spread democracy” throughout the Greater Middle East, has resulted instead in the spread of terrorism, instability, fear and human suffering on a pandemic scale.  Bush attempted to sound Jeffersonian about propagating freedom and democracy, but he sounded more like a TV pitchman, like Ed McMahon or Wilford Brimley, hawking life insurance.  Democracy was just another consumer product.  The scripted moralizing and phony altruism were designed to obscure the real reason for attacking Iraq, which was to “free” Iraq of its primary resource. 

The neocon cover plan was to impose liberty by force (an oxymoron if there ever was one), which somehow would be inspiring, motivational and transformative.  They “envisioned” that democracy would spread like some benevolent contagion, flowing out of the Persian Gulf, overwhelming one Arab and Muslim nation after another in the entire Greater Middle East.  But the contagion wasn’t benevolent.  It was a pox.

“Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive.”

Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

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Chapter Nine

IRAN

“This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous.  And having said that, all options are on the table.”

George Bush, 02/22/05

“He is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.”

Plato (c.428-348 B.C.)

Among the many images that Americans saw on TV in the days and weeks following 9/11, were those of millions of people around the world, taking to the streets in sympathy with the United States for having been criminally attacked.  The demonstrations were fitting, in that among the 2,973 victims were people from 90 other nations, and of many religions.  Among those images were some from Iran, showing hundreds of thousands of Iranians, many of them crying, taking to the streets in a remarkable candlelight vigil.  There was a sea of flickering candlelight in Tehran.  There were Iranian Muslims holding up pro-American signs and waving American flags.  It was a heartfelt demonstration of solidarity. 

At the time, Iran’s President was Muslim cleric, Mohammad Khatami.  A moderate, Khatami was not only clamping down on religious extremism in his country, he also seemed to be reaching out to the West for some sort of rapprochement on a cultural level, if not a political one.  Combined with Iranian public empathy for Americans in the weeks and months after 9/11, it would have been the perfect time to open serious dialogue between Washington and Tehran.  However, what the rest of the world recognizes as negotiating, Bush and his neocon conspirators saw as “appeasement.”  The dictionary of neoconservative absolutes defines diplomacy and appeasement as meaning the same thing.

With a significantly large pro-democracy population in Iran, with millions of younger Iranians hungering for Western-influenced fashion, food, and technology (two-thirds of Iranians are under the age of 30), George W. Bush missed a ripe opportunity to expand on and encourage that yearning, to open doors and build bridges...

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Chapter Ten

FOREIGN POLICY

“I think it’s very important for world leaders to understand that when a new administration comes in, the new administration will be running the foreign policy.”

George W. Bush, quoted in USA Today, 01/12/01

“His ignorance is encyclopedic.”

Abba Eban (1915-2002)

When he first took the oath of office, for George W. Bush, the planet was pretty much terra incognita—his view of the world was a blank page.  It’s safe to assume that except for Iraq, Afghanistan, Mexico and perhaps Britain, it pretty much still is.  All one has to do is examine the inanities he uttered during his official visits to various countries (many of the more egregious ones are detailed throughout this chapter) and combine them with Bush Administration policy, which was built entirely of inflexible hegemonic assumptions and an arrogant imperialistic attitude, and it becomes very apparent that even after eight years in office, the 43^rd President of the United States still had no clue and no desire to have any clue about other nations, including their cultures, mores, customs or the political and economic relativism that they posed.  Astoundingly, he had even mistaken what country he was in during several of his state visits, confusing his host nations with others half way around the world—diplomatic effrontery at its most elementary.

One would expect that the leader of the greatest democracy on earth (at least it used to be), the leader of the free world (a mantel he wore with cynical insolence), would have had some kind of exposure to other cultures, other countries, or at least learned something about them during his days at Andover Prep School, Yale and Harvard.  Yes, like any major candidate for the office, he did have his committee of foreign policy advisors, but whenever he spoke about such issues, it was clear he had no practical background—only political.  In his case, it was the synthesized neocon one-dimensional view of the world.  I found it disconcerting, as I’m sure anyone who has traveled extensively would, that the...

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Chapter Eleven

THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE

“We’re a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws.”

George W. Bush, during a televised address to the nation, 05/15/06

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”

Plato, (427-347 B.C.)

The most readily visible indication that the nation’s judicial values were turned away from the ideals of equalitarianism were the rulings of the Bush U.S. Supreme Court, which favored, not individual rights, but special interest prerogatives; judicial temperament at its most obvious.  Yet, the not-so-obvious changes at the U.S. Department of Justice were, in many ways, even more profound and more disarming because they were put into effect while the nation’s attention was diverted by other matters, not the least of which was the War on Terror and the war in Iraq.  It was in the DOJ that defenders of individual rights were replaced with adherents of ideological canon. 

Of all the damage that was wrought on the governing institutions of the United States of America by the administration of George W. Bush, of all the agencies that had been shaken by cronyism, ineptitude and weakened by deliberate malfeasance, of all the authorities that had been ethically and constitutionally undermined and destabilized, none, other than perhaps the Executive Branch itself, sustained a more serious iconoclastic attack on the principles for which it exists than the U.S. Department of Justice.  The DOJ underwent a dangerous conversion.  It went from being the enforcement agency that protects and defends the interests of all of the people of the United States, to being both a political arm of the Republican Party and an agent for the radical Religious Right.

Using the unconstitutional Patriot Act as a platform, the DOJ became the clearinghouse that approved both the torture of “illegal enemy combatants” and spying on Americans.  It also turned the Civil Rights Division into a tool for fundamentalist evangelism.  Its...

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Chapter Twelve

SANCTIONING TORTURE

“Who would have thought that in the United States of America, in the 21^st Century, the top officials in the Executive Branch would routinely gather in the White House to approve torture?”

Senator Edward Kennedy, reacting to the disclosure that the decision to employ torture, even the methods to be used, was made by cabinet-level members of the Bush Administration and approved by the President, as quoted by the Associated Press,

04/10/08

“This government does not torture people.”

George W. Bush, 10/05/07

“All of those up and down the chain of command who bear any responsibility, must be held accountable for the brutality and humiliation they inflicted on the prisoners and for the damage and dishonor that they brought to our nation and to the United States Armed Forces.”

Senator Carl Levin, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, 05/11/04

I must say right at the outset, that this chapter was the most difficult to research and write, largely because, like most Americans, I took a thing called liberty for granted.  In fact, most of us live our day-to-day lives with what might be called the assumptions of democracy.  Only those who have been deprived of their equal status under the law would stop to consider how liberty or the denial of certain liberties could affect an individual.  However, under the Bush Administration, the most inept, shallow and constitutionally criminal in U.S. history, the assumptions of democracy, including the rights to vote, to privacy and to free speech among them, were sorely tested.

Another of those assumptions about democracy was that the United States of America was not an immoral nation that tortured people as a matter of policy.  The difficulty for me and for many Americans is the realization that my country did the unthinkable...

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Chapter Thirteen

PEPFAR, NOT FAR ENOUGH

“We’re by far the most generous nation in the world—and I’m proud to report that.  This isn’t a contest of who’s the most generous.  I’m just telling you as an aside.  We’re generous.  We shouldn’t be bragging about it, but we are.  We’re very generous.”

George W. Bush, 07/16/03

As the administration of George W. Bush mercifully entered its final year in 2008, there seemed to be lukewarm bipartisan agreement that the Bush White House, now universally known for managing one failed initiative after another, produced one major foreign policy humanitarian outreach program perhaps worthy of being called a positive legacy.  Even Bush’s opponent in the 2004 election campaign, Democratic Senator John Kerry, as quoted in the New York Times on January 5, 2008, said: 

“I think it represents a tremendous accomplishment for the country.”

Well, Senator, not exactly.  The program being hailed was one of only two generally accepted Bush success stories, first unveiled to the world in his 2003 State of the Union Address.  (The other was the ineffective No Child Left Behind Initiative.)  It was included in the address to the nation at the last minute, a decision that went against the advice of his neocon advisors, who believe the government should not be in the social program business. 

“Tonight I propose the Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, a work of mercy beyond all current international efforts to help the people of Africa.”

George W. Bush, 01/28/03

The initiative was given the acronym PEPFAR—the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.  It was touted as the largest international public health initiative ever launched by one nation.  Bush promised that the United States would put up $15...

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Chapter Fourteen

THE WATCHDOGS CAUGHT NAPPING

“Governments always tend to want not really a free press, but a managed or well-conducted one.”

Lord Radcliffe, British lawyer, (1899-1977)

“We look forward to analyzing and working with legislation that will make—it would hope—put a free press’ mind at ease that you’re not being denied information you shouldn’t see.”

George W. Bush, 04/14/05

The pack mentality of the American media was one reason that the Bush Administration enjoyed overwhelming support for invading Iraq.  The media helped spread the word, giving credence to the Punic faith of George W. Bush in his phony war.  His sky-high public approval ratings during the time line, roughly between 9/11 and just after the preemptive invasion of Iraq in March 2003, were due in part to the media’s lack of dogged probing and hard-hitting reporting.  There was no snarling at the thresholds of power.  There were only whimpers and rollovers. 

With a collective shrug, the nation’s media resorted to casually accepting the Bush Administration’s perfidious and constant exhortations about threats to the country’s liberty; that we had to “defeat the terrorists abroad so we don’t have to face them here at home,” patriotic slogans repeated over and over and over again.  It didn’t matter that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and that his feared WMD didn’t even exist.  He did it, whether he did it or not and he had them, whether he had them or not.  The Bush Administration said so, so it must be true.

“How is the world ruled and how do wars start?  Diplomats tell lies to journalists, and then believe what they read.”

Karl Kraus (1874-1936) Austrian writer and journalist

As if that wasn’t enough, some of the rabidly conservative media, broadcast in particular, went beyond repeating the Bush fairy tale.  They embellished and passed off rumor and conjecture as valid news stories and even invented reports that had no basis..

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Chapter Fifteen

KATRINA

“We’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do.  First, we’re going to save lives and stabilize the situation.  And then we’re going to help these communities rebuild.  The good news is, and it’s hard to see it now, that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before.”

George W. Bush, 09/02/05

“If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.”

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

On the front page of the New York Times on Tuesday, June 27, 2006 was a color photograph of an airfield in Hope, Arkansas.  The airfield was filled with 10,000 empty mobile homes being stored there by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, at a cost to taxpayers of $250,000 per month or $3 million per year.  Fulfilling the adage that “one picture is worth 10,000 words,” that image graphically illustrated an accompanying story about the scope of post-Hurricane Katrina waste and fraud.  To quote from the first paragraph of the attendant story written by Times reporter, Eric Lipton, Hurricane Katrina:

“…produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes, and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing the taxpayers up to $2 billion.”

Lipton went on to write that a New York Times “tally of ignoble acts” could go even higher.  (nytimes.com.Vol.CLV #53,623 pg 1.)  And higher it did go.  One year after that story was published, a government audit was released indicating that losses to waste and fraud could be nearly twice that much.  The Bush Administration relied on private enterprise to do the clean-up and rebuilding, but what the nation got was privateering.

Political party opponents can argue from sunrise to sunset about the incompetence of the Bush Administration’s prosecution of the War on Terrorism or the War in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Chapter Sixteen

SECRETS

“I understand there’s a suspicion that we—we’re too security-conscience.”

George W. Bush, 04/14/05

“Secrecy and a free, democratic government do not mix.”

Harry Truman, 33^rd President of the United States, (1884-1972)

There were two operative characteristics that defined the administration of George W. Bush.  One was the unrepentant pathology of lies and deceit.  The other was a codependent necessity—secrecy.  The reason given for not being forthcoming with Congress or with the American people was always the same—it was a matter of “national security” and the War on Terror required it be so.  And when it came to not cooperating with Congress, special commissions or the media, the Bush White House constantly invoked “executive privilege.”  There has never been a presidential administration in the history of this nation that was as secretive as this one.

Time and again, Bush and members of his administration claimed that to make information public was to “aid the enemy.”  But just who was the enemy?  Was it the terrorists?  Or was it the American people?

“Truth is suppressed, not to protect the country from enemy agents, but to protect the Government of the day against the people.”

Roy Hattersley, British author and politician (1932-    )

Parsing information as to whether or not it meets the overly broad definition of being a state secret should be undertaken with great care.  Likewise, determining whether or not the secrecy status of previously classified information has been mitigated by the simple passage of time, should receive due diligence to make sure the public has rightful access to it.

In either event, there are two general considerations.  First:  Does a piece of information truly meet the criterion of being so...

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Chapter Seventeen

CONGRESS V. THE CONSTITUTION

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Twice, George W. Bush took the oath of office from the Chief Justice of the United States.  Twice he repeated the 35 words embedded in the Constitution that every president intones, a promise to the American people.  At the heart of that promise is a simple but powerful declaration to: 

“…preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Article II, Section 1

Bush not only broke that promise, he conducted a full frontal assault on the Constitution.  There is no shortage of scholars of history and constitutional law who believe it was the most concerted and dangerous effort ever perpetrated to undermine the nation’s laws that protect us all.  Much of the criticism of the Bush Administration’s policies and usurpations is rooted, not in the milieu of self-serving political objection, but directly in and supported by the venerable Constitution of the United States and its subsequent Bill of Rights. 

The first attempt to create the nation’s governing blueprint, the Articles of Confederation, was seriously flawed and in its place was born the Constitution.  The Bill of Rights was a consequent response to matters not addressed in the Constitution, the specific civil liberties of the governed.  The Bill of Rights codified the idealisms of individual rights that had been addressed in the Declaration of Independence. 

These Founding documents were created during a time span of roughly only 15 years, one of the most unique periods in human history.  The Constitution and Bill of Rights became, not just static literature confined to fixed points in time, but the beginning of an evolutionary process that continues to this day.  The Constitution is a living legal organism that has been amended as the nation grew and changed. 

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Chapter Eighteen

INTERDICTING REVISIONISM

“Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history revisionist historians is what I like to call them.”

George W. Bush, 06/16/03

In December 2006, over two years before his term in office was scheduled to end, it was revealed that plans were already underway to build a presidential library for George W. Bush.  Even as the intractable and costly foray into Iraq lurched toward a perpetual U.S. military presence, and even as stone after stone was being unturned, revealing one lurid fact after another, each one reconfirming just how grossly inept, if not corrupt and criminal his administration was, Bush turned his attention to how he will be remembered and where.  After all, there are priorities.

With the failed Bush Presidency already crashing and burning in a cloud of dust, the very worst presidency that the nation has ever had to endure by far, it was already time to start figuring out how to cauterize all the warts, how to give form to a grand illusion that George W. Bush, the “War President,” was the Franklin Roosevelt, the Abe Lincoln, the Winston Churchill of our time.  Neocon history forgers have their work cut out for them, because George W. Bush was more like the Chance Gardner, the Forrest Gump, the Alfred E. Neuman of our time.  His image would need major reconstruction.  The body of his “work” would need multiple prostheses.  A haltingly ugly legacy would need extensive plastic surgery to give it a new facade, a false face.

The monument to solipsism, avarice and failure is to be called the “George W. Bush Presidential Center.”  (I’m sure you’ve noticed that the word “library” is missing, but we’ll get to that in a moment.)  Less than halfway into his 2^nd destructive term, the location had already been chosen—Southern Methodist University in Austin, Texas—alma mater of former librarian and First Lady, Laura Bush.  The price tag was huge, conservatively (no pun intended) estimated to be $500 million, which is certainly not a conservative sum.

Interestingly, the cost for the Bush Library—sorry, I mean, the Bush Presidential Center, was roughly in the same ballpark as...

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Chapter Nineteen

WHY BOTHER?

“One of the things we’ve got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing between really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity.”

Barack Obama during an interview with Will Bunch of the
Philadelphia Daily News, 04/14/08

“National honor is national property of the highest value.”

James Monroe (1758-1831)

Democracy is predicated on the remarkable concept that individuals and disparate groups of individuals can govern themselves.  In order for that notion to work however, a system of laws is necessary, defining the roles that the leaders must play and the boundaries that those representatives and servants of the people must observe.  It is necessary to provide the means and the framework to remove from office those officials who violate the people’s trust, as defined by law.  One method is by way of the ballot box.  Another is expulsion from office by the offender’s peers.  The ultimate way is to be formally charged and tried.

There is no higher honor, no higher trust that Americans can bestow upon any single individual than the Presidency of the United States of America.  It is the most powerful and most visible public office in the world.  Even though the Framers of the Constitution could not have possibly imagined how their United States would evolve into the world power it came to be, they did have the political fortitude, the wisdom, the common sense to know that the power of the presidency, bequeathed to one individual, includes huge responsibilities, enormous authority and with it, the potential to misuse or abuse that power.  So they made sure that the people of the United States would be protected from the temptation of anyone occupying the highest office in the land to seize authority that was not intended, power that is unconstitutional, power that is antidemocratic, power that is authoritarian.  Besides defining the duties and limits of the office, the Founders inserted a legal check-valve for Congress to use if it were necessary to remove a president from office for "treason" or...