George W Bush paved the way for Trump - to rehabilitate him is appalling

[Judi Lynn]

Arwa Mahdawi

We don’t have to rewrite the former president’s record just because the incumbent is unleashing his own campaign of shock and awfulness

Wed 6 May 2020 02.00 EDT


It is 2040. Coronavirus is a distant memory. Boris Johnson has fathered his 19th child. Toy Story 12 and Fast & Furious 32 are playing in cinemas. Donald Trump is a cuddly nonagenarian who is cooed over by liberals. “Remember the good old days when Donny joked about injecting bleach?” people will reminisce fondly. “What a legend!”

Does that last prediction sound improbable? It shouldn’t: just look at the ongoing rehabilitation of George W Bush. It is only 11 years since Bush left office, but widespread amnesia regarding his regressive record appears to have set in. People have already giggled over his adorable struggle to put on a poncho during Trump’s inauguration and praised his unlikely friendship with Ellen DeGeneres. Now many liberals are fawning over Bush for the incredible achievement of being an iota more sane than Trump.

On Saturday, Bush put out a video calling for compassion and national unity during the coronavirus crisis. In it, he declared: “We are not partisan combatants; we are human beings.” This is a lovely message; really, it is. It is just a shame he wasn’t so invested in our shared humanity when he used the fabricated threat of weapons of mass destruction to bomb Iraq into oblivion. It is a pity he didn’t think about “how small our differences are” when he fought LGBTQ+ rights. It is unfortunate he wasn’t so concerned about compassion during his botched and heartless response to Hurricane Katrina.

If there were an Oscar for best use of cinematography to whitewash a bloody legacy, then Dubya has certainly earned it. His three-minute message – which was part of The Call to Unite, a project featuring videos from celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Julia Roberts – has been viewed more than 6m times and generated widespread praise. With Trump in office, suddenly Bush doesn’t seem so bad to many observers. At least Bush could reach across the political aisle now and again. “Bush handled post-Katrina by asking his father and Bill Clinton to help,” tweeted Maggie Haberman, the New York Times’ White House correspondent. “The current president has been uninterested in asking his predecessors to get involved as the country deals with Covid.”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/06/george-w-bush-paved-the-way-for-trump-to-rehabilitate-him-is-appalling

[Arkansas Granny]

1. The Bush Presidency was a failure. Trump's Presidency had been a catastrophe.

Bush was lazy and inept. Trump is all of that with meanness and cruelty thrown in for good measure.

The thought of Trump being in office for another 4 years scares me. I don't know how the country would survive.

[dalton99a]

5. +1. A lazy entitled asshole vs. true sadistic evil

[Fiendish Thingy]

2. War criminals should be prosecuted, not rehabilitated. Nt

[Harker]

3. republican'ts have been pushing the envelope

for upwards of forty years.

It's crucial that we not let the sick outrages of their latest expansion eclipse, or even diminish, the loathsome nature of their antecedents.

No normalization of the abnormal is acceptable.

[colsohlibgal]

4. Dubya Was A Puppet

He was a useful fool for others, mainly Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld.....who wanted the Oil in Iraq.

Trump is dumb, greedy, witless, and evil. You see him and just want to slap him or punch him.

He has botched the response to this virus horribly. He was warned strongly about this virus in his daily briefings going back to December/January. He doesn’t read them others do and ignored what those who read it told him.

He is sentencing lots of people to death, but the comfortable majority of them are Trumpsters.

He should lose badly.

[CaptainTruth]

6. True on W being a puppet ... Of the PNAC.

The names you mentioned were all PNAC members (W wasn't a member) & Iraq wasn't just about oil, it was part of their grand vision of creating an "Imperial America" with an "Imperial President" so they could "transform the Middle East" using American military force & spread "Pax Americana" around the globe.

I'm still amazed at how our media ignored everything they wrote & published 1997-2000, when it was on their web site for the world to see.

For example, Bolton was a PNAC member too, & in 2000 (before W was in office & any of them were in W's administration) they wrote that one of their goals was to create the US Space Force. Fast forward 18 years, Trump hires Bolton & suddenly the idea of Space Force appears & the media write about it as if it's Trump's idea. FFS, Bolton & the PNAC made it one of their goals 20 years ago, it's in writing! Where do you think Trump got the idea? Yet I didn't see a single media outlet point this out.

[Skittles]

7. THANK YOU

it sickens me to see even DUers saying Dubya was not so bad when compared to Trump, no THEY BOTH SUCK and now people die EVERY DAY because of them