Ron Paul Liberty Report
  • Home
  • Archives
  • About

Bush Haunts The GOP

2/22/2016

 
Picture
By Eric Margolis

“The evil that men do lives after them,” wrote Shakespeare. A prime example, former US President George W. Bush who appeared last week campaigning in South Carolina for his amiable younger brother, Jeb.


George W. continues to haunt the Republican Party and damage its electoral chances. At home, Bush has been staying out of public gaze; abroad, he is widely hated and limits overseas travel due to fear of war crimes arrest for his 2003 invasions of Iraq.

Republican spin doctors and the rightwing US media has been trying to soft soap Bush and his mentor, Dick Cheney, for years and slowly expunge their disastrous Iraq and Afghanistan Wars that opened a Pandora’s Box of horrors across the Muslim world. Democrats who cheered the war have equally sought to dodge responsibility. However, Hillary Clinton can’t seem to escape her tawdry war record.

The US, claim the Bush/Cheney amen chorus, was “misled” into invading Iraq by “faulty intelligence,” misled by the hope to promote democracy among the benighted Muslims; on a noble quest to remove a frightful dictator Saddam; and, of course, the famous missing “weapons of mass destruction.”

As candidate Donald Trump said last week, these were all bare-faced lies. These spurious allegations had one purpose: to mislead Americans into believing that Bush’s aggression in Iraq was a crusade for justice rather than a crude attempt to turn Iraq, with the world’s second biggest oil reserves, into an American vassal petrostate.

Unfortunately, mainstream America has not yet understood the enormity of the crimes that were committed in Afghanistan and Iraq. These include some one million civilians, cities destroyed, death squads, drone wars, kidnapping, torture and turning the US into a Stasi-like police state. And destruction of Iraq’s water and sewage treatment plants by US air attacks, spreading disease and pestilence across the nation.

Washington claimed these crimes against humanity were justified by the 9/11 attacks, though the real culprits came from Saudi Arabia, not remote Afghanistan or Iraq. Osama bin Laden was rubbed out so he could never voice the truth in a fair court.

Almost as bad was the continuing evil from Bush/Cheney’s so-called “war on terror.” Concocted and run by neocons, the faux war served to expand US control of the Muslim world (which I term ‘the American Raj’ in my book), and destroy enemies of Israel. This ‘war’ continues today, 13 years later, with military budgets doubled in size, a 100% increase in spending on all sorts of spies, mercenaries and private armies, militarized police forces, and endless funds to fuel America’s Mideast, African and Asian imperial wars.

There should be special taxes to pay for these conflicts, but all are dumped onto the national debt, driving America ever deeper into hock. CIA, founded to provide analysis, assassinates alleged enemies across the world. The US government now shamelessly spies on all of us, exceeding even the intrusions of the old KGB and Stasi. Thank you, George W. Bush for supposedly defending America.

Bush ruined America’s name across the globe, making us look no better, maybe even worse, than the Soviet Union. Today’s witch hunt in the US against Muslims began during the Bush years. The Bush administration made many Americans feel that Uncle Sam was their enemy, not their friend. Of course, to many of American hard right and neocons – Bush was a saint. He remains so today in the Bible Belt and West. South Carolina, with its evangelicals and retired military communities, venerates Bush. A survey taken just before the invasion of Iraq showed that over 70% of evangelical Christians ardently backed the impending war.

Bush/Cheney aggressions led directly to the spread of the al-Qaida movement whose goal was to drive western influence from the Muslim world. The more lethal ISIS was born in US prison camps in Iraq. Somalia’s Shebab arose after the US and Ethiopia overthrew Somalia’s legitimate government. Now, the US in fast blundering into a major new Mideast War in Iraq and Syria that could provoke a nuclear confrontation between Washington and Moscow.

Unfortunately, too few Americans understand these legacies of Bush, Cheney, Hillary Clinton and the neocons. Who even remembers former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright actually saying that the deaths of over 500,000 Iraq children (UN figures) caused by US sanctions were “worth the price.”

George Bush is no cowboy saint. He, Cheney and their henchmen should all face justice for the invasions of Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iraq.

This article was originally published at EricMargolis.com
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2016

Comments are closed.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015



  • Home
  • Archives
  • About