Blameless Dubya’s empty epitaph

COMMENT

George W Bush is back, though thankfully not in any position of power. The former US president this week reappeared on our screens, radios and newspapers to promote his memoir Decision Points, which has just been published in the US. Initial reports are describing it as self-serving but this will be of little surprise to anyone.

Like so many politicians before him, Bush seems intent on writing his own political epitaph before history gets the chance. He has, of course, offered himself to this judgement as all good statesmen must in public but it is clear from this publication that he wishes to strike pre-emptively in terms of dishing out the blame for his fiasco of a reign in the United States.
The major theme of the book seems to be that anything that might be perceived as a failure during his two terms in office was the fault of someone else. We saw a similar exercise from Tony Blair earlier this year, to name only one other. Despite this kind of thing being par for the course in political memoirs, it is difficult not to be bowled over by the extreme egotism and self-righteousness of these politicians turned authors.
Just like Blair, Bush comes out of the exercise looking like an extreme ideologue that is a mass of contradictions. In explaining his anti-abortion stance, Bush recounts a tale of his mother miscarrying, keeping the foetus in a jar and showing it to her son.
He claims he included the story in the book to show how he developed such a strong bond with his mother, although such a childhood experience might well count as traumatic enough to bring on the alcoholism and drug addiction which marked his life later on.
So while wishing to proclaim a respect for the sanctity of life, Bush happily begins, along with his team, to plan the invasion of Iraq a mere two months after the attacks of 9/11.
For all those who marched all over the world in opposition to that invasion, this fact will sting. It is yet another reminder of the significance of real people in the eyes of such dogmatic and ideologically driven politicians.
While such revelations may be infuriating, the book does contain some facts that are nothing short of chilling. The former president reveals that he and his team considered attacking Iran and Syria during their time in power.
The repercussions of such attacks do not bear thinking about. As abhorrent as the Bush years were, we are now left in the position of looking back and feeling that maybe we got away lightly.
Bush is happy to defend the use of torture by the United States during his years as part of his constructed “War on Terror”. For the British press, he has stated that the technique prevented bomb attacks in London.
In response, Downing Street released a statement saying it still considers the simulated drowning, euphemistically described as waterboarding, to constitute torture. Too little, too late.
We will have to wait a little longer for the book to be published on this side of the Atlantic but it will be interesting to see if Ireland warrants a mention for giving up its airports to the US government to use as hubs for the secret transport of its torture victims. Something tells me it will not.
Reading the extracts from Decision Points, it is difficult to shake a feeling of utter powerlessness and total separation from control over one’s own life. This man was for eight years the most powerful man in the world and held the well-being of millions in his hands.
The rest of the world had no say in his election and we lived and still live with his decisions. It is easy to forget at election time just how much power we put in the hands of those we elect.
Ireland is learning a bitter lesson regarding electing the incompetent and facing another decision in the near future, where the options will be limited to say the very least. In the case of Ireland particularly, a serious question regarding what’s left of this administration and the one that follows is how much power over Irish economic affairs they can actually be said to hold. Irish voters will have the chance to choose their rulers but who will rule those rulers?
George W Bush was often portrayed in the world’s media as a stupid man but clearly he is not. While I am not suggesting that he is a towering intellect, he has managed through the implementation of his ideologies to change geopolitics for the foreseeable future.
This is no mean feat. As a man who went with his gut, the younger Bush gave something of a master class to all aspiring politicians. Obama is currently suffering the consequences of over intellectualising politics in the United States. In this way he is reminiscent of Alan Dukes, who suffered at the hands of Fine Gael for the same reasons.
Having written this, it almost reads like the classic caricature of a politician but years of experience have taught us that it is a fairly accurate portrait. A socialist friend recently said to me,
“Those who seek power should be the last ones to be given it.” There is a sort of logic there of course but those who seek it are the only ones who are ever on offer to us.
“We elect them and ask them to represent us. They promise to do just that until the morning after the election when reality kicks in and they become keenly aware that they are untouchable until the next election.
When the promotional book tour is finished George W Bush will disappear once again but like all good politicians, the legacy of his time in power will be with us for decades to come.