PERRY: At the end of the day, when the history books are written, I think George W. Bush will go down as a very, very good President. Approaching great? I don’t know yet because I don’t know if we’ve seen the - A year and a half since he’s been out of office, this may be a little bit early to write George’s history. But here’s why he was an incredibly good President: because this man kept America safe. […] Anyone who is not a rank political hack, who has an agenda, and looks at this President’s efforts — I mean, there are two things that I think people judge Presidents on: their safety and the economy.
It should (and does) say a lot about abysmally low Republican standards for greatness that a nonentity like Texas Governor Rick Perry can with no hint of irony refer to George W. Bush as a “very, very good President”. Sure, the lies, wholesale murder of innocent Iraqi civilians (and American troops), and the willful suspension of oversight and responsibility as Wall Street thugs systematically drained and crippled our economy might SEEM to be bad things…. Then again, one man’s criminal ineptitude and war crimes is another’s principled leadership, eh?
Governor Goodhair, who really ought to have a pair of kneepads and a tube of AstroGlide with him when talking about The Worst President EVER ©, is truly and absurdly over the top in his praise of his predecessor. How bad is it? Well, when you say that George W. Bush may one day be remembered as a “great” President…you can’t very well expect to be taken seriously, can you? Then again, Timothy McVeigh and Paul Hill were “great” Christians, no?
I agree that a President can, and these days should, be judged on the two metrics elucidated by Governor Goodhair. The problem, though, is that Bush screwed the pooch on both counts. That’s right…and to extend the animal theme to even more ridiculous lengths, no matter how much lipstick you put on this pig, it’s still a pig. George W. Bush will be remembered as the President who:
- ignored warnings leading up to 9.11,
- manipulated intelligence in an effort to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein was behind 9.11,
- engaged in documented and proven lies and propaganda to get the war in Iraq neoConservatives had lusted over for years,
- conducted an illegal and immoral war that resulted in the deaths of upwards of 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians and 4,400 (and counting) American troops,
- turned a $127 billion budget surplus inherited from Bill Clinton into a budget deficit exceeding $1 trillion that he handed over to Barack Obama, and
- left behind an economy in which the median income fell, poverty rose, and TWO recessions occurred, the second of which nearly resulted in a worldwide economic collapse.
There are those out there will who misinterpret what I’m about to say, but I’m not advocating violence against a former President. Nonetheless, if George W. Bush was a man of honor, he’d recognize the crimes against humanity that he’s responsible for. He’d understand that while he couldn’t make up for the lies, the deaths, and the criminal ineptitude, he can at least take a small step toward making amends. He’d admit that he could take a page from the Japanese and commit seppuku. It would be the right thing to do…but then George W. Bush is a man who possesses neither honor nor courage.
Would that the Obama Administration could at least summon the moral fortitude to do the right thing and try Bush for murder. The fact that Bush is without a doubt a war criminal is neither a new nor a novel argument, nor does one have to work hard to find justification for it. The real crime lies in the fact that Bush is allowed to walk the Earth as a free man…and Republicans still by and large adore him.
I love my country, but George W. Bush and those like Rick Perry who fawn over his murderous, greed-soaked legacy make me ashamed to be an American. Being a patriot does NOT mean honoring a murderer and a war criminal, and it sickens me that there are those who have managed to delude themselves into believing that George W. Bush was a great President.
If the Obama Administration doesn’t have the balls to hand him a cigarette and a blindfold, they should at the very least be fitting him for an orange prison jumpsuit. In a just world, George W. Bush would never again walk the Earth as a free man.
