Monday, September 27, 2004
Ghanaian Chronicle: Bush: a Study in Failure (a view from abroad)
Ghanaian Chronicle (Accra)
COLUMN
September 23, 2004
Posted to the web September 23, 2004
By I. K. Gyasi
When a new history of the United States of America comes to be written, the narrative will show that the biggest disaster that ever happened to that country was President George W. Bush Jnr., and not the calamity of September 11, 2001.
And if George Bush should write his memoirs after being voted out of the White House, he should title the work, "Failure" with the sub-title, "How the Son Never Rose."
George Bush is the clearest example of how, in spite of all the privileges and advantages at one's disposal, one can easily fail to succeed in life.
George Bush will never be in the same league as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Frank Delano Roosevelt, J. F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Bill Clinton, for example.
While George W. Bush Snr., (the father) was carving a niche for himself in American society as ambassador, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and later as president of the United States, what was his son doing?
He was leading the life of the typical wastrel: dissipation and total aimlessness in life. In fact, as everyone knows, he had to be rescued from that life and rehabilitated by a group of Wesleyan priests.
One wonders whether the rehabilitation was one hundred percent successful.
This is the man who became the President of the United States of America under extremely dubious circumstances. In deed, if the way Bush was " elected" had happened in a so-called Third World or developing country, the "civilized and democratic" people of the Western world, would have cried "Foul."
The Florida vote was crucial. And Florida was where the elder brother of Bush was the Governor. Some ballot boxes disappeared for a time. Barriers were erected to stop some Black Americans from going to exercise their right to vote. They are known to vote for the Democratic Party.
A faulty voting machine was used that resulted in the votes of several Black Americans being rendered invalid.
The Democratic candidate for the Presidency, Al Gore, insisted on manual recounting of the votes. As the recounts threatened to turn the vote in Al Gore's favour, the matter ended up at the United States Federal Supreme Court.
There, with seven out of the nine Justices of the court being Republicans put on the Court mainly by previous Republican Presidents, the verdict unsurprisingly went in favour of Bush. Al Gore accepted the verdict with grace.
At the inauguration of a President of the United States, a number played is titled, "Hail To The Chief."
Having "won" the election under such unconvincing and highly questionable circumstances, it is no wonder that some of the spectators shouted, 'Hail To The Thief." Sure, he had stolen the Presidency, no doubt about that, Probably realizing his debilitating shortcomings as a person and as "a cut-purse president" George W. Bush set out to terrorize the rest of the world.
With a deadpan face, eyes almost shut out by his eyelids, snake-like lips, hectoring speeches and a bellicose posture, Bush sought to create the impression that he was the modern-day equivalent of the Old Wild West Sheriff who, alone or in the company of a posse, rides out of town to catch the bad guy and bring him to Justice.
On the contrary, Bush has proved himself rather the bad guy who, with his sidekicks, rides into town, pulls out his Smith & Wesson or Colt 45 pistols, heads for the nearest saloon, and starts to cower everyone by indiscriminating firing into the ceiling.
Came September 11 and Bush must have thought that a wonderful opportunity had been presented to him to embark on a crusade to rid the world of all the bad guys whom he describes as terrorists.
Buoyed up by his invasion of Afghanistan and the driving away of the Taliban regime, Bush must have convinced himself that he was invincible.
He must have been convinced further by the people he had assembled around him: Dick Cheney, his Vice President; Collin Powell, his Secretary of State; Donald Rumsfeld, his Secretary for Defense; Ms Condoleesa Rice, his national security Advisor, and John Ashcroft, his Attorney-General.
These people, as shown by the Guinness Book of Records, are all billionaires. The god they worship is an insatiable appetite for wealth, power and world domination.
Casting their eyes around, they saw what Bush came to describe as countries that terrorized the rest of the world through state-sponsored destabilization of other countries.
To Bush, these countries, namely Iraq, Iran and North Korea, formed an "axis of evil" that had to be destroyed. Attacked them one after the other and such so-called "rogue states" like Libya and Syria would quickly mend their ways.
The conquest of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein would open up that country for economic rape. Most of the people around him had made their fortunes in oil, especially Dick Cheney and Condoleesa Rice. The oil fields of Iraq were there for the picking.
Why not attack Saddam Hussein on the false pretext that, contrary to the resolutions of the United States, he had acquired, or was seriously acquiring, weapons of mass destruction, namely chemical, biological and nuclear weapons (WMDs)?
Without the sanction of a resolution by the United Nations, George Bush, the World's Number One Policeman or Sheriff, wore his ten-gallon hat and his cow boy boots, buckled his belt with two holsters for his fighting guns, swung into the saddle, and headed straight for Iraq. Dear readers, you know the rest of the story of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.
In Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, fingered as the villain who masterminded the September 11 catastrophe, reportedly remains at large.
So are the leaders of the Taliban regime.
Thanks to the power and the lure of money, Saddam Hussein has been betrayed to Bush. Far from Saddam's capture and the disbanding of his army ending hostilities in Iraq, Bush continues to sink in the Iraqi quicksand.
Far from being the Liberator bringing peace, development and prosperity, Bush has only succeeded in introducing chaos, needless bloodshed and disintegration to that country.
When he allegedly visited American soldiers in Iraq, he could only do so "Nicodemously," instead of riding in an open vehicle to acknowledge the cheers of a grateful people.
It is said that he wore a military uniform, ostensibly to empathize with the troops but more likely to hide his real identity so that he did not become a target. The man "highlighted it" out of town as fast as he had entered it.
On June 30, 2004, Bush will hand over the house of cards he has built in Iraq to a group. He knows very well that that house will collapse but it is anything to get out of that hellhole.
American jingoism, the policy of "my country right or wrong" and her hypocrisy and double standards pre-date the Bush Presidency.
Still, there can be no doubt that Bush in his almost four years in office has adopted the crudest type of foreign policy that has raised this American character to record heights.
The shocking record of the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and at the Guantanamo Base in Cuba has shown the ugliest face of George Bush and his America.
Today, the worst type of a so-called Third World dictator is an angel compared to George Bush. No wonder that 50 (fifty) former American diplomats have written to warn him about the effect of his policies. According to them, such policies are losing friends for America.
Today, George Bush encourages Israel to disregard international law, respect for human rights and to carry out acts of genocide. At least other American Presidents tried to bring about peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Today, George Bush says that the prisoners at the Guantanamo base are not regular prisoners of war but "illegal combatants." They are also said not to be on United States soil so the laws of the United States do not apply to them. Consequently, Bush has the right to hold them forever at the Base and under constant torture.
Far from winning his so-called war on terror, George Bush rather continues to stoke up the fires that forge terrorists around the world.
George W. Bush, this "king of shreds and patches" (apologies to Shakespeare's Hamlet), has become the biggest terrorist of all time.
He has succeeded in reducing America to the lowest point or nadir of her history while he himself has sunk lower than a snake's belly.
This is the man who wants another stay in the White House.
