Bush, the Butcher in Chief
The George Bush rehabilitation tour. You might know it simply by the presence of that major war criminal (I just couldn’t help myself) as he’s paraded around from one legacy media relic to the next, telling stories about his life, promoting his books, painting war veterans who’ve lost limbs because of his lies.
It’s proof of the fallacy of the so-called liberal media. It’s even more proof that the mainstream media is a corporate-run circle owned by billionaires & managed by millionaires and senior executives who live in gated communities and are actively trying to bury the truth that’s right before our eyes.
Bush left office in January 2009 with a sad approval rating of around 34%. Reports in recent years of his return to the spotlight as a counter to the other type of Republican, the type now exemplified by Trump, showed a post-presidency favorability rating that would make any sitting president ecstatic, that of 61%.
Recently I saw a video of an Iraq War veteran being escorted out of an auditorium where Bush was speaking. “You lied!” the man screamed as he reminded the former Butcher-in-Chief of the one million Iraqi deaths his lies and decision to invade the sovereign country resulted in. “You killed my friends!” he shouted as some aid or person with a microphone belittled his remarks.
I read a biography of George W. Bush about 5 years ago written by Jean Edward Smith. It was extensive. By the end, I almost respected the former president, even though the book was in no way some complimentary effort or hagiography. The biographer said that the invasion of Iraq was “easily the worst foreign policy decision ever made by an American president.”
That’s the thing about George W. Bush. For many people, and I’m willing to admit it, on the surface, he’s a likeable person. He comes across as laid back and willing to listen; capable of telling a few jokes. But when you pull apart the curtains; when you imagine the cries and bloody faces of children and parents who just lost family members in an explosion, a drone strike or military engagement, you see him for what he is. He’s a manufactured image; one that is cultivated and protected along the way by the corporate state that he enriched through the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He’ll be praised by the media when he passes on some time in the future. Sure, there may be a remark or two, just covering the bases, that he made a “mistake” in his decision to go into Iraq, but the larger truth will be left out. They won’t describe what he did in real terms; that his administration lied to the United Nations, the American people and the entire world. Nor will they inform viewers (and some readers) that Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, was tied to Halliburton and received deferred compensation in the amount of hundreds of thousands of dollars after the war machine kicked into gear in the region. No, they’ll praise George W. Bush for his “public service” and focus on the little things, the unimportant things, like how he spent his final days on his Texas Ranch and was pals with Ellen DeGeneres, or if he shared any quirky personality traits with his father, who wore eccentric, colorful and playful socks.
