For all his faults (and I never was a fan of his), Bush was and is not a bigot. Days after 9/11, in that highly charged environment, he went to a mosque. That took moral courage. Would Obama have done it? It only took him the last year of his presidency to visit the place of worship of the most beleaguered community in America. Yes I know Obama already had the "charge" of being a secret Muslim and all that - it still does not excuse his lack of moral courage.
Yes, before you guys tell me, we all know what happened with all the wars and their never ending consequences. Nothing to defend there. Its shameful. But was just pointing out the above.
He might not have been a bigot, but his ineptitude let bigots cause harm to people. I don't give a shit if you aren't, but if you explicitly enable torture, murder, and essentially genocide, then you are responsible for those acts.
The only reason that was such a show of that for him was because it meant he had to break with the sentiment that was running rampant in his own party and the people he was surrounded with. Which, sure, no small feat, but it didn't matter because he had a role in horrible things. He can't waive away that stuff by going "look I'm not totally evil".
I don't know, but Obama likely would have been facing impeachment and cries of treason from Republicans over doing that, so its not really a comparable situation.
Also, Junior I am sure is a much more fundamentally decent person than Daddy. As far as we know, he does not like going around slapping the butts of young girls.
I could buy that, Bush Sr helped enable a hell of a lot of terrible things for the US. And yep, he turned out to be a typical conservative hypocrite, preaching about morality (remember when he was crying about the Simpsons being horrible for America?) while being despicable himself. Among many failures of Bush Sr. Although, funnily enough, the one that killed his political career, is one that people are idiots about (him going against his prominent campaign promise to not raise taxes, which he broke because he listened to economic advisors and did the right thing for the country).
Surely you can't be serious? You think it was easy for the president of the country to go visit a mosque days after 9/11? To declare Islam being a religion of peace? How much political capital was to be potentially lost? What was to be gained at all politically for him?
The question is, was it all just a sham? While Bush was up there decrying anti-Muslim sentiment, his government was planning and orchestrating literal torture and war crimes. And Bush was aware of a lot of that stuff, so its not like he was ignorant of what was taking place. He explicitly signed off on a lot of it. Its unfortunate he didn't show that moral backbone when it actually mattered. Colin Powell tried. It ended his political career, but he at least tried to stand up about it.
Imagine how much different Bush's reputation would be if he'd had stood up to Cheney and the rest of them back then. Instead he let them use him as a mask, and then they let him take the fall for it. Either way, he absolutely had a role in it. He's doing some good things, but I'm sick of him trying to eschew his role in what happened. I'd almost laugh about how his own party tried to eschew him from it, only for them to basically take all the things that was horrible and make them tentpoles of their platform. They did the same thing with Reagan though, so it shouldn't have been a shock to him. I don't know, maybe he should be speaking out against that stuff today? Nah, he'll just chuckle as the Republicans fuck over America yet again.
Please take moment to read this piece, my friends. And this is from New York Times of all places. Can't be more liberal publication than that. Please do read the whole piece before commenting
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/u...-9-11-another-anniversary-worth-honoring.html
An excerpt:
In its immediate moment, Mr. Bush’s appearance at the Islamic Center of Washington may have helped to quell vigilante assaults on American Muslims and on those, like Sikhs, who were mistaken for them. At the policy level, the president’s words also served notice that unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he would not intern or in any way collectively punish innocent American citizens who happened to share a religion or ethnicity with foreign foes.
After hailing American Muslims as “friends” and “taxpaying citizens” in his comments at the mosque, Mr. Bush went on to say: “These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. And it’s important for my fellow Americans to understand that.” He quoted from the Koran: “In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil.” Then he continued in his own words: “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.”
I've given him credit for that repeatedly. The more I think about it though, the more it makes me realize how heinous it was for him to be doing that and then turning around and enabling his government to commit atrocities. I'm starting to wonder if it wasn't just all a political ploy. Much like how, sure he had minorities for positions in his government, its too bad so many of them helped the agenda of Republicans that caused such damage, often deliberately to minorities. So many of them were in it for their own gain.
Another excerpt:
Eleven years after the fact, Mr. Bush has been treated like a prophet without honor in his own land. He was barely mentioned at the Republican convention last week, and former presidential candidates like Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann have regularly inveighed against Muslims. While former President Bill Clinton praised Mr. Bush at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C., for his work on AIDS in Africa and disaster relief, most allusions to Mr. Bush there were for the war in Iraq and the economic collapse that struck in his final months in office.
Yet there was always another side to Mr. Bush, present in his self-definition as a “compassionate conservative,” in his deep faith and respect for all religions. He was probably the most colorblind Republican president since Lincoln, appointing Hispanic and black Americans to meaningful cabinet positions — national security adviser, secretary of state, secretary of education, attorney general.
During Mr. Bush’s campaign for the Republican nomination in 2000, he spoke at a mosque, making him the first candidate in either party to do so. During a debate against his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, he denounced the profiling of Arab-American and Muslim-American airline passengers. Mr. Bush’s appointment schedule on Sept. 11, 2001, until tragedy intervened, included a 3 p.m. meeting with a delegation of American Muslim leaders.
With each post of yours, it establishes exactly what Bush was. Bush seems like he could probably genuinely be a decent guy. The problem is, he was not fit to be President. Even he knew/knows that. Isn't there a quote, from him, in response to the massive fuckups that Afghanistan and Iraq turned into, that he was "elected because he campaigned about improving education"? Yet he's linked to also one the most cited education fuckups as well. Guy just plain sucked at governance, and that caused horrible problems.
He is a bumbling idiot and never should have ever been anywhere near any political office. That's why I try to give him some credit, as he was in waaaaaaaaaay over his head and was easily lied to by the really despicable members of his party. But that in and of itself is a problem. He played their useful idiot, putting on a disarming face to the horrible things they were doing or enabling, which let them go on longer and be more destructive than they likely would have been if we had to look despicable people like Cheney and Karl Rove in the face all the time. We'd see them for the sneering assholes they are. Instead we got the genteel dunce Bush.
Somehow, the Republicans successfully managed to have Bush be the fall guy. That absolutely is unfair to him, but he deserves to own some of it because he played a role in it (so him acting like he's getting all this unfair blame is bullshit too). The real problem was and still is the modern Republican platform. Not only did that not improve, it basically has been doubling down on all of the negative (for most people) parts of it and seems to do so everytime any of it fails. For whatever reason, people were able to see that when Romney was the face of it. But then they lost their goddamned minds and let Turmp figuratively (although I'm sure given the chance, he'd do it literally) shit all over them (and everyone else).
Without Bush, I think there's a strong possibility that we would not have Turmp. As he would have been seen for what he is, clearly unfit for Presidency, and thus he would've even known to stay the hell away from doing anything more than the bluster about it that he's been spewing for decades. Instead, Bush let the despicable people of the Republican party fully take over, and we've seen the fruits of that since.
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