A Charming Bush in Denial

Former Congressman Tom Andrews on George W. Bush:

“It’s rather extraordinary: Former President Bush was on national television last night here in the US, and he said that his lowest moment, lowest of the low, was when rap artist Kanye West accused him of not caring about black people during the Katrina debacle and the failure of the federal government to respond to the hurricane disaster, when in fact you have a war against Iraq, a violation of international law and invasion that killed thousands of American soldiers, and over 100,000 Iraqis, all to go after weapons of mass destruction that did not exist,” Andrews said. “And to make it worse, you had American soldiers, 700 of whom lost their lives in Iraq because in this war of choice this administration did not think it’s important enough to provide them with the protective armor that if they had it they would be alive today. In this interview, based upon this book, the president said his lowest moment was when he was criticized by an American rap artist for his handling of the Katrina disaster. I don’t think anyone buys this. The Iraq war, most Americans now believe, the vast majority of American believe, was a tragic mistake. And the fact that it was done in the way it was done makes it even worse.”

To the contrary, I think it is very possible that Bush was most anguished by criticism of him from a black rap star. What does that show? Perhaps how utterly warped his perception of things are?  And how in denial he is about his lead role in the killing and maiming of hundreds of thousands of people through the wars he started? 

Didn't Jesus say something about judging the tree by the fruit it bears?  Evil is what evil does, and the mass murder and brutal suffering of war is simply evil, through and through.  Frankly, war is evil even when it's 'just', though Bush's wars were in no way just or necessary.

But isn't this true about every evil political leader in history?  Really, evil people can be the most charming people you'd ever want to meet.  Scott Peck wrote about that in his book People of the Lie.  Referring to the study of the evil of Naziism by the psychologist Erich Fromm, Dr. Peck (who was a psychiatrist) wrote,

Fromm's work is based on his study of certain of the Nazi leaders of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. It has the advantage over my own in that his subjects can surely be certified as evil by the judgment of history. But his work is weakened for the same reason. Because he never actually met his subjects, because they were all men in positions of high political power in a particular regime of a particular culture at a particular time, one is left with the impression that truly evil human beings were "over there" and "back then." The reader is led to believe that real evil does not have anything to do with the mother of three next door or the deacon in the church down the street. My own experience, however, is the evil human beings are quite common and usually appear quite ordinary to the superficial observer.

Hannah Arendt, in her famous book Eichman in Jerusalem, similarly wrote about how banal and compliant the Nazis were, even as they committed their evil deeds,   Interestingly, she wrote this about the Nazi Adolf Eichman:  "Despite all the efforts of the prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a 'monster,' but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown. And since this suspicion would have been fatal to the entire enterprise [his trial], and was also rather hard to sustain in view of the sufferings he and his like had caused to millions of people, his worst clowneries were hardly noticed and almost never reported."

The other possibility is that Bush was just a total stooge and an 'out-to-lunch' puppet of the evil forces of the government that he appointed.  And I don't dismiss this out of hand, because of one person, Dick Cheney (actually let me include Don Rumsefeld).

But either way you look at it, George W. Bush was a tragic disaster for this country and the world.

But he can be charming, no doubt.

My feeling is that this memoir is his attempt to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the American people. I would prefer that he not be rehabilitated. The wounds and suffering and death resulting from his wars are still too fresh and real.