K
Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names
Guest
The End of the Road for George W. Bush
by Chris Hedges
The Gilbert and Sullivan charade of statesmanship played out by George
W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the Middle
East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule. Despots stripped of
power are transformed from monsters into buffoons. And this is the
metamorphosis that is eating away at the Bush presidency.
Bush stood in Jerusalem, uncomfortable and palpably bored. He mouthed
platitudes about a peace settlement that mocked the humanitarian
crisis he aided and abetted in Gaza, the rapacious land grab by Israel
in the West Bank and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The diminished
George Bush, increasingly irrelevant at home and abroad, is fading
into insignificance. A year from now one half expects to see him stand
up at the next president's inauguration and screech "I'm melting! I'm
melting!" as he sinks into a puddle of slime. He will return, I
expect, to his ranch, where he will be able to spend the rest of his
life doing the only task for which he has shown any aptitude - cutting
down brush with a chain saw.
He may yet rise again to torment us with an attack on Iran, condemning
more innocents to slaughter. He and his cigar-smoking soul mate Ehud
Olmert would like to go out with one more flash of mayhem and
violence. But even this will not ultimately save him. Bush will soon
be reduced to the cipher he once was, left to spend the rest of his
life trying to salvage a legacy of shame and deceit. In a just world
he would be put on trial, if not by the International Criminal Court
of Justice then by the U.S. Congress. He would be forced to face up to
his lies and wars of aggression. But the moral rot that infects the
nation has seeped into the bowels of the legislative as well as the
executive branch.
World leaders, including those whom Bush desperately wants to
intimidate, now dismiss him. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei said a few days ago that relations with the United States are
of "no benefit to the Iranian nation. The day such relations are of
benefit, I will be the first one to approve of that."
Bush will have flown from Israel to Palestine to Kuwait to Bahrain to
the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia to Egypt in search of a
legacy, one that he hopes will lift up his name in history. But,
isolated and deluded, he has yet to grasp that he and the United
States are reviled and detested for our violence, arrogance and greed.
The bands played on the tarmac. He was toasted at state dinners. But
even our allies, including Kuwait and Egypt, know Bush is a danger to
himself and others.
He publicly displayed his inability to connect rhetoric with reality.
He promised peace and cooperation, a new era, a Palestinian homeland.
He promised solutions that will arise from negotiations that do not
exist. Negotiations, in his eyes, are always about to begin. They were
about to begin a year ago. They were about to begin with Annapolis.
They are about to begin now. The messy issues between the Israelis and
Palestinians that he and his administration have never attempted to
address-the borders, the expanding Jewish settlements and outposts,
the plight of Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem-will all be
seamlessly solved ... one day. But the brutal reality of the Israeli
occupation barrels forward. The Jewish settlements and outposts
continue to be expanded. The crisis in Gaza, with the cuts in fuel and
electricity, the deadly army incursions and airstrikes, has turned the
world's largest walled prison into a swamp of human misery. And huge
new settlements, like Har Homa, continue to rise up on Palestinian
soil.
When Bush met with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah he
blithely defended the patchwork of Israeli roadblocks that have turned
the West Bank into a series of ringed Palestinian ghettos. The
roadblocks, he told Abbas, are necessary for Israeli security. He
announced that the 1949 Green Line, the borders established by the
United Nations, would never be restored. There would be no discussion,
he said, of the status of Jerusalem. And the plight of Palestinian
refugees would be solved by setting up an international fund, meaning,
of course, that none would ever return. In short, he offered an
unequivocal endorsement of right-wing Israeli policy with not a murmur
of dissent. And the Palestinians can either have it rammed down their
throat or rot. Bush will be back, he has promised, in May to celebrate
the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state. Olmert, no
doubt, will again be fulsome in his praise, which is probably what
Bush's trip to the Middle East is, at its core, really about. Bush
desperately wants someone to pretend with him that he is an agent for
peace and statesmanship. Olmert, who knows the callow American leader
will give him everything he desires, is happy to oblige.
But as Bush basks in the glow of his own fantasy, the suffering in
Gaza, one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters, along with the
savage occupation of Iraq, continues to fuel widespread anger and
rage. Bush has spent his time in office bolstering the Middle East's
most despotic regimes, including that of Gen. Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.
He approved a $20-billion arms package for these states. He has backed
efforts to crush mainstream Islamic groups that have electoral
legitimacy and popular support. He has stood by as these regimes have
stifled democratic dissent, and he has, with Israeli encouragement,
isolated governments, even friendly governments, in the Middle East
that raised feeble protests. But his day is past. There is open
revolt. Opinion polls show that two-thirds of Palestinians, and three-
fourths of Israelis, do not believe Bush can affect events in the
Palestinian territories.
The agenda of the Bush White House is exposed as irrelevant, myopic
and counterproductive. Most Arab countries are in open defiance of
Washington and are actively reaching out to Iran.
"As long as they [Iran] have no nuclear program ... why should we
isolate Iran? Why punish Iran now?" Arab League Secretary-General Abu
Moussa told The Washington Post.
The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed
ElBaradei, is in Iran for talks. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
attended December's Gulf Cooperation Council summit. The Iranian
president attended the just-completed hajj in Mecca at the invitation
of the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah. Tehran is exploring the
resumption of diplomatic ties with Egypt, cut since the 1979
revolution, and has offered to cooperate with Cairo in the production
of nuclear energy. And the Syrian and Lebanese governments have
ignored Washington's warnings to sever ties with Hezbollah and Hamas.
It is the end of the road for George Bush. The world takes less and
less notice of him. He strutted and swaggered across the stage. He
bellowed and raged. He plundered and murdered. And now he wants to be
anointed as a peacemaker. His presidency, like his life, has been a
tragic waste. But he at least he has a life. There are tens of
thousands of mute graves in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan that
stand as stark testaments to his true legacy. If he wants to redeem
his time in office he should kneel before one and ask for forgiveness.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for
nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is
the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on
America."
by Chris Hedges
The Gilbert and Sullivan charade of statesmanship played out by George
W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the Middle
East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule. Despots stripped of
power are transformed from monsters into buffoons. And this is the
metamorphosis that is eating away at the Bush presidency.
Bush stood in Jerusalem, uncomfortable and palpably bored. He mouthed
platitudes about a peace settlement that mocked the humanitarian
crisis he aided and abetted in Gaza, the rapacious land grab by Israel
in the West Bank and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The diminished
George Bush, increasingly irrelevant at home and abroad, is fading
into insignificance. A year from now one half expects to see him stand
up at the next president's inauguration and screech "I'm melting! I'm
melting!" as he sinks into a puddle of slime. He will return, I
expect, to his ranch, where he will be able to spend the rest of his
life doing the only task for which he has shown any aptitude - cutting
down brush with a chain saw.
He may yet rise again to torment us with an attack on Iran, condemning
more innocents to slaughter. He and his cigar-smoking soul mate Ehud
Olmert would like to go out with one more flash of mayhem and
violence. But even this will not ultimately save him. Bush will soon
be reduced to the cipher he once was, left to spend the rest of his
life trying to salvage a legacy of shame and deceit. In a just world
he would be put on trial, if not by the International Criminal Court
of Justice then by the U.S. Congress. He would be forced to face up to
his lies and wars of aggression. But the moral rot that infects the
nation has seeped into the bowels of the legislative as well as the
executive branch.
World leaders, including those whom Bush desperately wants to
intimidate, now dismiss him. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei said a few days ago that relations with the United States are
of "no benefit to the Iranian nation. The day such relations are of
benefit, I will be the first one to approve of that."
Bush will have flown from Israel to Palestine to Kuwait to Bahrain to
the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia to Egypt in search of a
legacy, one that he hopes will lift up his name in history. But,
isolated and deluded, he has yet to grasp that he and the United
States are reviled and detested for our violence, arrogance and greed.
The bands played on the tarmac. He was toasted at state dinners. But
even our allies, including Kuwait and Egypt, know Bush is a danger to
himself and others.
He publicly displayed his inability to connect rhetoric with reality.
He promised peace and cooperation, a new era, a Palestinian homeland.
He promised solutions that will arise from negotiations that do not
exist. Negotiations, in his eyes, are always about to begin. They were
about to begin a year ago. They were about to begin with Annapolis.
They are about to begin now. The messy issues between the Israelis and
Palestinians that he and his administration have never attempted to
address-the borders, the expanding Jewish settlements and outposts,
the plight of Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem-will all be
seamlessly solved ... one day. But the brutal reality of the Israeli
occupation barrels forward. The Jewish settlements and outposts
continue to be expanded. The crisis in Gaza, with the cuts in fuel and
electricity, the deadly army incursions and airstrikes, has turned the
world's largest walled prison into a swamp of human misery. And huge
new settlements, like Har Homa, continue to rise up on Palestinian
soil.
When Bush met with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah he
blithely defended the patchwork of Israeli roadblocks that have turned
the West Bank into a series of ringed Palestinian ghettos. The
roadblocks, he told Abbas, are necessary for Israeli security. He
announced that the 1949 Green Line, the borders established by the
United Nations, would never be restored. There would be no discussion,
he said, of the status of Jerusalem. And the plight of Palestinian
refugees would be solved by setting up an international fund, meaning,
of course, that none would ever return. In short, he offered an
unequivocal endorsement of right-wing Israeli policy with not a murmur
of dissent. And the Palestinians can either have it rammed down their
throat or rot. Bush will be back, he has promised, in May to celebrate
the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state. Olmert, no
doubt, will again be fulsome in his praise, which is probably what
Bush's trip to the Middle East is, at its core, really about. Bush
desperately wants someone to pretend with him that he is an agent for
peace and statesmanship. Olmert, who knows the callow American leader
will give him everything he desires, is happy to oblige.
But as Bush basks in the glow of his own fantasy, the suffering in
Gaza, one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters, along with the
savage occupation of Iraq, continues to fuel widespread anger and
rage. Bush has spent his time in office bolstering the Middle East's
most despotic regimes, including that of Gen. Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.
He approved a $20-billion arms package for these states. He has backed
efforts to crush mainstream Islamic groups that have electoral
legitimacy and popular support. He has stood by as these regimes have
stifled democratic dissent, and he has, with Israeli encouragement,
isolated governments, even friendly governments, in the Middle East
that raised feeble protests. But his day is past. There is open
revolt. Opinion polls show that two-thirds of Palestinians, and three-
fourths of Israelis, do not believe Bush can affect events in the
Palestinian territories.
The agenda of the Bush White House is exposed as irrelevant, myopic
and counterproductive. Most Arab countries are in open defiance of
Washington and are actively reaching out to Iran.
"As long as they [Iran] have no nuclear program ... why should we
isolate Iran? Why punish Iran now?" Arab League Secretary-General Abu
Moussa told The Washington Post.
The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed
ElBaradei, is in Iran for talks. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
attended December's Gulf Cooperation Council summit. The Iranian
president attended the just-completed hajj in Mecca at the invitation
of the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah. Tehran is exploring the
resumption of diplomatic ties with Egypt, cut since the 1979
revolution, and has offered to cooperate with Cairo in the production
of nuclear energy. And the Syrian and Lebanese governments have
ignored Washington's warnings to sever ties with Hezbollah and Hamas.
It is the end of the road for George Bush. The world takes less and
less notice of him. He strutted and swaggered across the stage. He
bellowed and raged. He plundered and murdered. And now he wants to be
anointed as a peacemaker. His presidency, like his life, has been a
tragic waste. But he at least he has a life. There are tens of
thousands of mute graves in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan that
stand as stark testaments to his true legacy. If he wants to redeem
his time in office he should kneel before one and ask for forgiveness.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for
nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is
the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on
America."