03-12-2008, 09:19 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-12-2008, 09:25 PM by Peter Lemkin.)
...certainly anyone's memory and then some...
Thought I'd start a Bush-bashing thread. Have at it. Thought this article was as good as Bush was/is bad. It 'ain't over till its over!...
The Failed Presidency of George W. Bush: A Dismal Legacy
by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay
Global Research, October 18, 2008
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10598
[PART I]
“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”Plato (427-347 B.C.)
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." Aesop (620–560 B.C.)
“When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.” H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American author
“We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'Stay the course.' Stay the course? ... I'll give you a sound bite: Throw all the bums out!” Lee Iacocca, former CEO of Chrysler Corporation (book: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?)
Whoever is elected president in the coming November 4 American election will inherit a most miserable situation on nearly all fronts. This is because George W. Bush has been one of the worst presidents the U.S. has ever had, if not the worst. It is widely recognized that he was a below average politician who led his country on the wrong track, both domestically and internationally. Today, only a meager 9 percent of Americans dare to say that their country is moving in the right direction.
As a matter of fact, a very large majority of Americans— both Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and of rural areas, high school graduates and college-educated— all say that the United States has been headed in the wrong direction under George W. Bush's stewardship. Bush's approval rating reflects the lack of confidence that Americans have in him and his administration. In fact, George W. Bush has recorded the lowest approval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll. And, around the world, the United States has never had a leader who commands so little respect and confidence. Most people in the U.S. and abroad will find satisfaction in seeing his term come to an end.
This is a terrible indictment of the Bush Administration that has presided over America's destinies for the last eight years. What is more disconcerting, this all came after George W. Bush won the presidential election in 2000, with fewer popular votes than Democratic candidate Al Gore, after a one-judge-majority decision of the Supreme Court, in effect, gave him the presidency. Therefore, this is an administration that had no widespread democratic mandate to do what it has done. And it has done a lot of things wrong. In fact, many people think this has been a morally bankrupt administration.
International disaster: An Illegal and Immoral War of Aggression
At the center of this fiasco, is the fact that the Bush-Cheney administration and its neocon cohort rushed to exploit the 9/11 terrorist attacks and used this as a pretext to implement a preconceived pro-Israel and pro-oil plan in the Middle East. This led them to adopt a simplistic response to Islamist terrorism, barging into complex Middle East societies on elephant feet. But in the process, they have only succeeded in making matters worse and in encouraging more hatred against the U.S. and more terrorism.
Indeed, George W. Bush will be remembered above all as the man who launched an illegal and immoral war of aggression against another sovereign nation, on false pretenses and forged documents, destroying in so doing the entire country of Iraq, and damaging perhaps irreparably the U.S. reputation in the world. As Scott McClellan, Bush's former Press Secretary during seven long years, stated, Bush and his advisers [in launching the Iraq War] "confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candour and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war".
Bush's deception and lies about Iraq in order to initiate a war of aggression, an aggression that is a war crime under the Nuremberg standard established by the U.S., are well documented. Thus, historians will have no difficulty in establishing the fact that the United States, under Bush, acted as a lawless international aggressor.
In initiating a war of aggression, Bush did violate the United Nations Charter, which "prohibits the use of military force" against any nation without the specific approval of the United Nations Security Council. The Security Council never approved the American-led military invasion of Iraq. Therefore, Bush and his crew had no international legal basis to invade Iraq. And they cannot pretend that Congress gave them such an authorization, since it is well known in law that no domestic law can override a signed international treaty in good standing.
In a domestic parallel, George W. Bush and his administration have set up what is probably the most widespread war profiteering system in modern history, through which billions and billions of dollars were misappropriated and wasted. At the same time as they were adopting a permanent war posture abroad, they were irresponsibly calling at home for a 674 billion dollar tax cut for their rich supporters and pushing up the deficits, of which a large proportion was financed by borrowing abroad.
Illegality and Immorality
On the legal front, this is an administration that has shamed the United States with its illegal actions, with its deliberate and dishonest lies, with its war crimes, its disregard for international treaties, and with its overt disregard of constitutional government.
On the question of lawlessness, the list of missteps the Bush-Cheney administration took outside of the law is too long for a short article as this one. But there are numerous documents to be consulted and it is possible to attempt a short summary.
From the very beginning, the Bush-Cheney administration has dismissed international law and disregarded domestic law. They began by either repudiating or refusing to honor the United States' international commitments and obligations, thus showing indifference, if not outright hostility, toward international law. They opted out of five important international treaties and commitments: the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty and the International Criminal Court. In so doing, the United States, under the Bush-Cheney administration, has betrayed its international commitments and has moved away from being a moral state, and more and more toward the status of an international rogue state.
This was all confirmed when the Bush-Cheney administration adopted, in September 2002, the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, an internationally illegal and immoral program. Indeed, under existing international law, no country may attack another under false pretenses, nor use military force unilaterally.
This was followed by the even more dangerous and hairy Cheney Doctrine (or the One Percent Doctrine) which is anti-human rights, anti-rule of law and anti-Constitution, because it posits that if there is even a 1% chance American interests are in jeopardy somewhere in the world, unilateral American military interventions are justified, and this without conclusive evidence or extensive analysis. Such hubristic and shoot-from-the-hip foreign policies are a true recipe for international anarchy and thus render a great disservice to humanity.
Domestically, President George W. Bush has introduced the unconstitutional practice of adding signing statements to new laws, stating that he has the right, as President, to violate any section of a law, should he deem it in the national interest to do so. For example, on January 28, 2008, Bush signed into law the repeal of the “Insurrection Act Rider” in the 2006 defense appropriations bill. That rider had given the President sweeping power to use military troops in ways contrary to the Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus Act and authorized the president to have troops patrol American streets in response to disasters, epidemics, and any “condition” he might cite. But in signing this repeal, Bush attached a signing statement that he did not feel bound by the repeal, thus opening the possibility he could ignore the law any time he saw fit to do so.
Disrespect for Liberty and the U.S. Constitution
As if this were not enough, there was the attempt by the Bush-Cheney regime to suspend and even permanently abolish the more than eight centuries old right of Habeas Corpus. And when the Supreme Court, in a far-reaching decision on June 12, 2008, rebuked the B-C administration's argument that it had a right to establish concentration camps on U.S.-run properties around the world and hold prisoners indefinitely with no legal recourse, especially at the Guantánamo Bay detention center, President George W. Bush had the gall to criticize the Supreme Court's decision while on a trip to Europe.
Then Bush embarked upon a program of domestic spying on Americans never before seen in a democracy. He, indeed, removed most of the safeguards that had been erected to protect citizens from illegal and warrantless spying activities by government, thus making a mockery of the U.S. Constitution. In particular, the Bush-Cheney administration did not respect key parts of the U.S. Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. It must said, however, that some Bush Democrats, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Democratic House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D - MD) have also willfully and enthusiastically collaborated with George W. Bush in enlarging the government’s spying powers over citizens. On his own, however, George W. Bush did his utmost to make permanent the President's War Powers, thus making sure that the United States could remain on a permanent war path and be in a position to suspend at will basic constitutional rights.
On top of everything, George W. Bush will be remembered as a politician who authorized torture and indefinite detention of prisoners. Indeed, after Bush willfully suspended the rights accorded prisoners of war by the Geneva Conventions, he was, in fact, officially turning the United States into an immoral nation that openly and unashamedly resorts to torture, thus violating basic rules of morality, international law and a host of international treaties adhered to by the United States. In fact, the Geneva Conventions in its article 3 does not only prohibit torture, but also any cruel, inhuman, degrading, and humiliating treatment of a detainee “in all circumstances.” However, it is not only on the issue of torture that the United States under Bush has become an international pariah.
The Bush-Cheney administration has also operated concentration camps in many countries, holding captive tens of thousands of detainees and hiding them from the Red Cross, the body empowered to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions. The Bush-Cheney administration has placed itself outside the civilized world and was nearly alone, last May (2008), in trying to undermine a treaty banning cluster bombs, a type of bombs which have killed so many civilians, when 111 countries signed a treaty outlawing these inhuman weapons. On this occasion, the United States, under Bush-Cheney, sided with a handful of weapons makers and users, none of them known as great defenders of human rights and democracy: Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. The Bush-Cheney administration has truly been a shamelessly immoral administration.
(PART II Sunday, October 26, 2008
The Failed Presidency of George W. Bush: A Dismal Legacy. --[PART II]
by Rodrigue Tremblay
"Greed is good. Greed is right. Greed Works."
Gordon Gekko, corporate raider (played by Michael Douglas) in the movie Wall St.
“President [George W.] Bush will be remembered as the most fiscally irresponsible president in our nation’s history.”
Sen. Kent Conrad, Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee
[The government's decision to buy shares in the nation's leading banks] “is not intended to take over the free market, but to preserve it.”
President George W. Bush, October 14, 2008
"Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights. ...We've said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to those people in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo, and we've said we can torture prisoners and deprive them of an accusation of a crime to which they are accused."
Jimmy Carter, former American president
“After [this] war [against Iraq] has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.”
Sen. Robert Byrd, (D-W.Va), March 19, 2003
Economically, the Bush-Cheney administration is leaving behind a big financial and economic mess. In fact, this is an administration that has brought misery upon America by its misguided economic policies that have built a mountain of shaky debt and rendered dysfunctional large segments of the American banking industry and large sectors of the U.S. economy, through inappropriate deregulation to enrich greedy special interest characters, wheeler-dealers, corporate con men, professional short-sellers and other scam artists and swindlers. In so doing, it has empowered rich parasitic speculators and turned the financial sector into a giant casino, thus risking the health of the entire economy.
Indeed, and to complete the picture, the Bush-Cheney administration has emptied the public treasury, debased the U.S. currency and fueled deflation, inflation and, in the end, produced stagflation and what can turn out to be a very serious recession.
This is understandable. Over the last eight years, the Bush-Cheney administration has adopted a laissez-faire policy based on a let-them-eat-cake ideology. It has pushed for economic deregulation throughout the government, beginning with the de-fanging of the Securities and Exchange Commission. It has pursued an aggressive policy of deregulation of the large global investment banks, which were basically left to self-regulate themselves and allowed to build up the largest mountain of flimsy backed debt instruments and risky financial derivative products ever seen in history. It did the same thing for other regulatory agencies such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, worker safety and transportation agencies.
It is thus no accident that the Bush-Cheney administration has presided over one of the worst financial collapses and credit crises in U.S. history, by packing regulatory agencies with cronies whose mission it was to let rapacious speculators and market manipulators go wild. The result has been the creation of a casino-like speculative economy that is now crashing down before our very eyes.
Under Bush-Cheney, financial markets became manipulated by unscrupulous bankers and by rapacious hedge funds, as public regulation was reduced to a minimum. Millions of Americans lost their homes through foreclosure and many more saw their working and pension incomes eroded and destroyed by inflation and plant closings. And as what could be a protracted recession proceeds, many more will lose their jobs in the coming months, while some older employees may have to postpone their retirement because of the disappearance of their pension money.
In a parody of President Abraham Lincoln, we can say this has been an administration that deserved to be dubbed "a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy." Some would not hesitate to say, also in parody, that it has been "a government of Goldman Sachs, by Goldman Sachs and for Goldman Sachs," considering the ubiquitous political and economic role which that firm has played within the Bush-Cheney administration. President Bush's own Chief of Staff, Mr. Joshua Bolten, comes from Goldman Sachs. And these days, everybody pretends not see the real and potential conflicts of interests of other public servants who are now on the giving public side of things, at the U.S. Treasury, and who are going to be on the receiving private side of public money, in a scant few months. It is the same thing with a lot of what the U.S. Treasury does. —Even the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Mr. Mark Carney, is a former employee of Goldman Sachs!
In a related matter, for historical purposes, it will be remembered that, in the fall of 2008, the Bush-Cheney administration sponsored a huge rescue-plus-bailout of the largest speculative Wall Street investment banks (which the Bush SEC had deregulated on March 28, 2004) and of a host of other banking and insurance institutions which had engaged in alchemy or synthetic finance and made risky investments. To that effect, it is ready to place at risk close to $2.0 trillion of public money and let the public debt explode, with few conditions attached to protect the public interest. In fact, the Bush administration stood ready to advance hundreds of billions of dollars and only requested non-voting preferred shares in the troubled banks and insurance companies that it rescued from bankruptcy. As a consequence, contrary to what the Roosevelt administration did in the 1930s, the U.S. government has no direct say about the way the troubled financial institutions are managed and run, and thus, if the bail-out were to be successful, most of the benefits would go to bank owners and their executives; but, if things continue to deteriorate, taxpayers will be the ones left holding the bag.
Some have said this is an example of corporate socialism for the rich. In fact, this has nothing to do with socialism per se, but everything to do with legal and unapologetical extortionism on a high level. For all these reasons, if the ongoing recession and financial crisis were to turn into a full-fledged economic depression, as it could possibly do, and as it did in 1873-1880 and 1929-1939, it would have to be dubbed by historians "the Bush-Cheney Grand Economic Depression" of 2008-20(?).
George W. Bush will also be remembered for having financed his whimsical and ill-conceived three-trillion-dollar war of aggression against Iraq on credit, thus worsening the U.S. financial situation in the world, perhaps irrevocably. He is leaving behind him a financial mess like no one has seen since the great depressions following 1873 and 1929.
In all fairness, it must be said that some Democrats in Congress, the so-called Bush Democrats who usually vote with Republicans on foreign policy issues, have also been supporters of the Iraq War from the beginning and have invariably voted for the hundreds of billions of dollars required to finance it.
The Bush-Cheney administration has presided over economic dislocations and greed-fed financial bubbles, and it has been an agent of poverty and of financial and economic crises. This is an administration that will be sadly remembered for its huge tax cuts for the super rich, for its huge fiscal deficits bequeathed to future generations and for its huge and costly bailouts for speculators and high flyers, and very little for families and ordinary citizens.
As a consequence, on the whole, Americans are today poorer than when this duo took power eight years ago, while the gap between the very rich and the average American has never been wider. It has been a regime that has borrowed and borrowed, debased the currency, waged unnecessary wars and doled out defense contracts in the most reckless possible way, with a minimum of oversight and accountability.
• International Mess: An Irresponsible Attempt to rekindle the Cold War
Internationally, Bush and Cheney not only started a war against Iraq, a country that had never attacked the United States, but they also did their utmost to recklessly restart the Cold War with Russia. They did that by unilaterally abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, by transforming NATO into an offensive military alliance and by installing anti-missile sites, manned by American soldiers, in former Warsaw Pact countries, such as Poland and the Czech Republic, and in former Soviet republics, right next to Russia's borders.
The Bush-Cheney administration designed a policy of encircling Russia by arming pro-U.S. European client states. That is why they have directly provoked Russia by incorporating six former Warsaw Pact nations and three former soviet republics in the now offensive and U.S.-controlled military alliance that is NATO. They went as far as to openly support and arm aggression-prone governments in some former Soviet republics, especially in Georgia, the birthplace of Stalin. All this reflects a pro-active and aggressive military stance against Russia designed to provoke Russia and restart the Cold War, thus dangerously increasing the chances of a nuclear world war.
Let us recall that when Khrushchev's Soviet Union tried to install missiles in Cuba in 1962, it nearly started a world war. Now, half a century later, with Bush-Cheney, the brinkmanship is on the other side. They have acted irresponsibly in provoking Russia, as if they did not mind restarting a cold war with that country. Russian exasperation was well expressed by then Russian President Vladimir Putin when, in 2007, he said that “The United States [under Bush and Cheney] has overstepped its national borders in every way, and as a result, no one feels safe. . . . such a policy stimulates an arms race.”
• Disrespect of Military Advice
George W. Bush will be remembered as the man who brought within the walls of the White House not only corruption and incompetence in nearly every field of activity—as well as a lack of moral fortitude in approving torture—but also a quasi dictatorial gangster mentality in dealing with Congress, with the military, with other governments and with political opponents in general. For instance, Bush fired more generals and admirals than any other head of state since Adolf Hitler in Germany, some seventy years ago. Among others, Bush fired or forced into early retirement Gen. Eric K. Shinseki; Gen. John Abizaid; Gen. George Casey; and Adm. William J. Fallon, then top U.S. commander in the Middle East.
• A Propaganda-prone Administration
But perhaps one of the greatest indictments of the Bush-Cheney administration is the way it has used crude covert propaganda techniques worthy of a totalitarian regime. Indeed, it has launched a sophisticated propaganda campaign to manipulate information and public opinion that has had the effect of undermining democracy and the freedom of information. For one, it has subverted the major American TV and radio networks by provided them with false independent "analysts".
Second, it has paid journalists to push surreptitiously for government programs. Third, it has intervened within news organizations, using the power of government to have journalists and producers fired when they didn't toe the government line. Fourth, the Bush administration has embarked upon the business of censoring movies. And that is only the tip of the iceberg, considering how pervasive the Bush-Cheney administration's direct and indirect control of the media has been. Never has American journalism and U.S. corporate media been so corrupt and complicit, and this is because the United States has never had such a corrupt administration, i.e. the 2001-2009 Bush-Cheney administration.
• Conclusion
To conclude, it should be obvious by now to anybody who has eyes to see that the Texan politician named George W. Bush, son of former President George H. Bush, was unqualified for high office. He has amply and tragically demonstrated it. This is a politician who presided over an administration that has acted as a wrecking crew, destroying most of everything it has touched. [For more analysis on that, see my book "The New American Empire".]
In its countless failures, the Bush-Cheney administration has been an unhealthy mixture, rarely seen in a democracy, of immorality, lawlessness and incompetence. —It won't be missed by most people, both in the U.S. and around the world.
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at: rodrigue.tremblay@ yahoo.com.
He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'.
Visit his blog site at http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Thought I'd start a Bush-bashing thread. Have at it. Thought this article was as good as Bush was/is bad. It 'ain't over till its over!...
The Failed Presidency of George W. Bush: A Dismal Legacy
by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay
Global Research, October 18, 2008
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10598
[PART I]
“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”Plato (427-347 B.C.)
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." Aesop (620–560 B.C.)
“When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.” H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American author
“We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'Stay the course.' Stay the course? ... I'll give you a sound bite: Throw all the bums out!” Lee Iacocca, former CEO of Chrysler Corporation (book: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?)
Whoever is elected president in the coming November 4 American election will inherit a most miserable situation on nearly all fronts. This is because George W. Bush has been one of the worst presidents the U.S. has ever had, if not the worst. It is widely recognized that he was a below average politician who led his country on the wrong track, both domestically and internationally. Today, only a meager 9 percent of Americans dare to say that their country is moving in the right direction.
As a matter of fact, a very large majority of Americans— both Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and of rural areas, high school graduates and college-educated— all say that the United States has been headed in the wrong direction under George W. Bush's stewardship. Bush's approval rating reflects the lack of confidence that Americans have in him and his administration. In fact, George W. Bush has recorded the lowest approval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll. And, around the world, the United States has never had a leader who commands so little respect and confidence. Most people in the U.S. and abroad will find satisfaction in seeing his term come to an end.
This is a terrible indictment of the Bush Administration that has presided over America's destinies for the last eight years. What is more disconcerting, this all came after George W. Bush won the presidential election in 2000, with fewer popular votes than Democratic candidate Al Gore, after a one-judge-majority decision of the Supreme Court, in effect, gave him the presidency. Therefore, this is an administration that had no widespread democratic mandate to do what it has done. And it has done a lot of things wrong. In fact, many people think this has been a morally bankrupt administration.
International disaster: An Illegal and Immoral War of Aggression
At the center of this fiasco, is the fact that the Bush-Cheney administration and its neocon cohort rushed to exploit the 9/11 terrorist attacks and used this as a pretext to implement a preconceived pro-Israel and pro-oil plan in the Middle East. This led them to adopt a simplistic response to Islamist terrorism, barging into complex Middle East societies on elephant feet. But in the process, they have only succeeded in making matters worse and in encouraging more hatred against the U.S. and more terrorism.
Indeed, George W. Bush will be remembered above all as the man who launched an illegal and immoral war of aggression against another sovereign nation, on false pretenses and forged documents, destroying in so doing the entire country of Iraq, and damaging perhaps irreparably the U.S. reputation in the world. As Scott McClellan, Bush's former Press Secretary during seven long years, stated, Bush and his advisers [in launching the Iraq War] "confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candour and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war".
Bush's deception and lies about Iraq in order to initiate a war of aggression, an aggression that is a war crime under the Nuremberg standard established by the U.S., are well documented. Thus, historians will have no difficulty in establishing the fact that the United States, under Bush, acted as a lawless international aggressor.
In initiating a war of aggression, Bush did violate the United Nations Charter, which "prohibits the use of military force" against any nation without the specific approval of the United Nations Security Council. The Security Council never approved the American-led military invasion of Iraq. Therefore, Bush and his crew had no international legal basis to invade Iraq. And they cannot pretend that Congress gave them such an authorization, since it is well known in law that no domestic law can override a signed international treaty in good standing.
In a domestic parallel, George W. Bush and his administration have set up what is probably the most widespread war profiteering system in modern history, through which billions and billions of dollars were misappropriated and wasted. At the same time as they were adopting a permanent war posture abroad, they were irresponsibly calling at home for a 674 billion dollar tax cut for their rich supporters and pushing up the deficits, of which a large proportion was financed by borrowing abroad.
Illegality and Immorality
On the legal front, this is an administration that has shamed the United States with its illegal actions, with its deliberate and dishonest lies, with its war crimes, its disregard for international treaties, and with its overt disregard of constitutional government.
On the question of lawlessness, the list of missteps the Bush-Cheney administration took outside of the law is too long for a short article as this one. But there are numerous documents to be consulted and it is possible to attempt a short summary.
From the very beginning, the Bush-Cheney administration has dismissed international law and disregarded domestic law. They began by either repudiating or refusing to honor the United States' international commitments and obligations, thus showing indifference, if not outright hostility, toward international law. They opted out of five important international treaties and commitments: the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty and the International Criminal Court. In so doing, the United States, under the Bush-Cheney administration, has betrayed its international commitments and has moved away from being a moral state, and more and more toward the status of an international rogue state.
This was all confirmed when the Bush-Cheney administration adopted, in September 2002, the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, an internationally illegal and immoral program. Indeed, under existing international law, no country may attack another under false pretenses, nor use military force unilaterally.
This was followed by the even more dangerous and hairy Cheney Doctrine (or the One Percent Doctrine) which is anti-human rights, anti-rule of law and anti-Constitution, because it posits that if there is even a 1% chance American interests are in jeopardy somewhere in the world, unilateral American military interventions are justified, and this without conclusive evidence or extensive analysis. Such hubristic and shoot-from-the-hip foreign policies are a true recipe for international anarchy and thus render a great disservice to humanity.
Domestically, President George W. Bush has introduced the unconstitutional practice of adding signing statements to new laws, stating that he has the right, as President, to violate any section of a law, should he deem it in the national interest to do so. For example, on January 28, 2008, Bush signed into law the repeal of the “Insurrection Act Rider” in the 2006 defense appropriations bill. That rider had given the President sweeping power to use military troops in ways contrary to the Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus Act and authorized the president to have troops patrol American streets in response to disasters, epidemics, and any “condition” he might cite. But in signing this repeal, Bush attached a signing statement that he did not feel bound by the repeal, thus opening the possibility he could ignore the law any time he saw fit to do so.
Disrespect for Liberty and the U.S. Constitution
As if this were not enough, there was the attempt by the Bush-Cheney regime to suspend and even permanently abolish the more than eight centuries old right of Habeas Corpus. And when the Supreme Court, in a far-reaching decision on June 12, 2008, rebuked the B-C administration's argument that it had a right to establish concentration camps on U.S.-run properties around the world and hold prisoners indefinitely with no legal recourse, especially at the Guantánamo Bay detention center, President George W. Bush had the gall to criticize the Supreme Court's decision while on a trip to Europe.
Then Bush embarked upon a program of domestic spying on Americans never before seen in a democracy. He, indeed, removed most of the safeguards that had been erected to protect citizens from illegal and warrantless spying activities by government, thus making a mockery of the U.S. Constitution. In particular, the Bush-Cheney administration did not respect key parts of the U.S. Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. It must said, however, that some Bush Democrats, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Democratic House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D - MD) have also willfully and enthusiastically collaborated with George W. Bush in enlarging the government’s spying powers over citizens. On his own, however, George W. Bush did his utmost to make permanent the President's War Powers, thus making sure that the United States could remain on a permanent war path and be in a position to suspend at will basic constitutional rights.
On top of everything, George W. Bush will be remembered as a politician who authorized torture and indefinite detention of prisoners. Indeed, after Bush willfully suspended the rights accorded prisoners of war by the Geneva Conventions, he was, in fact, officially turning the United States into an immoral nation that openly and unashamedly resorts to torture, thus violating basic rules of morality, international law and a host of international treaties adhered to by the United States. In fact, the Geneva Conventions in its article 3 does not only prohibit torture, but also any cruel, inhuman, degrading, and humiliating treatment of a detainee “in all circumstances.” However, it is not only on the issue of torture that the United States under Bush has become an international pariah.
The Bush-Cheney administration has also operated concentration camps in many countries, holding captive tens of thousands of detainees and hiding them from the Red Cross, the body empowered to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions. The Bush-Cheney administration has placed itself outside the civilized world and was nearly alone, last May (2008), in trying to undermine a treaty banning cluster bombs, a type of bombs which have killed so many civilians, when 111 countries signed a treaty outlawing these inhuman weapons. On this occasion, the United States, under Bush-Cheney, sided with a handful of weapons makers and users, none of them known as great defenders of human rights and democracy: Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. The Bush-Cheney administration has truly been a shamelessly immoral administration.
(PART II Sunday, October 26, 2008
The Failed Presidency of George W. Bush: A Dismal Legacy. --[PART II]
by Rodrigue Tremblay
"Greed is good. Greed is right. Greed Works."
Gordon Gekko, corporate raider (played by Michael Douglas) in the movie Wall St.
“President [George W.] Bush will be remembered as the most fiscally irresponsible president in our nation’s history.”
Sen. Kent Conrad, Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee
[The government's decision to buy shares in the nation's leading banks] “is not intended to take over the free market, but to preserve it.”
President George W. Bush, October 14, 2008
"Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights. ...We've said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to those people in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo, and we've said we can torture prisoners and deprive them of an accusation of a crime to which they are accused."
Jimmy Carter, former American president
“After [this] war [against Iraq] has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.”
Sen. Robert Byrd, (D-W.Va), March 19, 2003
Economically, the Bush-Cheney administration is leaving behind a big financial and economic mess. In fact, this is an administration that has brought misery upon America by its misguided economic policies that have built a mountain of shaky debt and rendered dysfunctional large segments of the American banking industry and large sectors of the U.S. economy, through inappropriate deregulation to enrich greedy special interest characters, wheeler-dealers, corporate con men, professional short-sellers and other scam artists and swindlers. In so doing, it has empowered rich parasitic speculators and turned the financial sector into a giant casino, thus risking the health of the entire economy.
Indeed, and to complete the picture, the Bush-Cheney administration has emptied the public treasury, debased the U.S. currency and fueled deflation, inflation and, in the end, produced stagflation and what can turn out to be a very serious recession.
This is understandable. Over the last eight years, the Bush-Cheney administration has adopted a laissez-faire policy based on a let-them-eat-cake ideology. It has pushed for economic deregulation throughout the government, beginning with the de-fanging of the Securities and Exchange Commission. It has pursued an aggressive policy of deregulation of the large global investment banks, which were basically left to self-regulate themselves and allowed to build up the largest mountain of flimsy backed debt instruments and risky financial derivative products ever seen in history. It did the same thing for other regulatory agencies such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, worker safety and transportation agencies.
It is thus no accident that the Bush-Cheney administration has presided over one of the worst financial collapses and credit crises in U.S. history, by packing regulatory agencies with cronies whose mission it was to let rapacious speculators and market manipulators go wild. The result has been the creation of a casino-like speculative economy that is now crashing down before our very eyes.
Under Bush-Cheney, financial markets became manipulated by unscrupulous bankers and by rapacious hedge funds, as public regulation was reduced to a minimum. Millions of Americans lost their homes through foreclosure and many more saw their working and pension incomes eroded and destroyed by inflation and plant closings. And as what could be a protracted recession proceeds, many more will lose their jobs in the coming months, while some older employees may have to postpone their retirement because of the disappearance of their pension money.
In a parody of President Abraham Lincoln, we can say this has been an administration that deserved to be dubbed "a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy." Some would not hesitate to say, also in parody, that it has been "a government of Goldman Sachs, by Goldman Sachs and for Goldman Sachs," considering the ubiquitous political and economic role which that firm has played within the Bush-Cheney administration. President Bush's own Chief of Staff, Mr. Joshua Bolten, comes from Goldman Sachs. And these days, everybody pretends not see the real and potential conflicts of interests of other public servants who are now on the giving public side of things, at the U.S. Treasury, and who are going to be on the receiving private side of public money, in a scant few months. It is the same thing with a lot of what the U.S. Treasury does. —Even the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Mr. Mark Carney, is a former employee of Goldman Sachs!
In a related matter, for historical purposes, it will be remembered that, in the fall of 2008, the Bush-Cheney administration sponsored a huge rescue-plus-bailout of the largest speculative Wall Street investment banks (which the Bush SEC had deregulated on March 28, 2004) and of a host of other banking and insurance institutions which had engaged in alchemy or synthetic finance and made risky investments. To that effect, it is ready to place at risk close to $2.0 trillion of public money and let the public debt explode, with few conditions attached to protect the public interest. In fact, the Bush administration stood ready to advance hundreds of billions of dollars and only requested non-voting preferred shares in the troubled banks and insurance companies that it rescued from bankruptcy. As a consequence, contrary to what the Roosevelt administration did in the 1930s, the U.S. government has no direct say about the way the troubled financial institutions are managed and run, and thus, if the bail-out were to be successful, most of the benefits would go to bank owners and their executives; but, if things continue to deteriorate, taxpayers will be the ones left holding the bag.
Some have said this is an example of corporate socialism for the rich. In fact, this has nothing to do with socialism per se, but everything to do with legal and unapologetical extortionism on a high level. For all these reasons, if the ongoing recession and financial crisis were to turn into a full-fledged economic depression, as it could possibly do, and as it did in 1873-1880 and 1929-1939, it would have to be dubbed by historians "the Bush-Cheney Grand Economic Depression" of 2008-20(?).
George W. Bush will also be remembered for having financed his whimsical and ill-conceived three-trillion-dollar war of aggression against Iraq on credit, thus worsening the U.S. financial situation in the world, perhaps irrevocably. He is leaving behind him a financial mess like no one has seen since the great depressions following 1873 and 1929.
In all fairness, it must be said that some Democrats in Congress, the so-called Bush Democrats who usually vote with Republicans on foreign policy issues, have also been supporters of the Iraq War from the beginning and have invariably voted for the hundreds of billions of dollars required to finance it.
The Bush-Cheney administration has presided over economic dislocations and greed-fed financial bubbles, and it has been an agent of poverty and of financial and economic crises. This is an administration that will be sadly remembered for its huge tax cuts for the super rich, for its huge fiscal deficits bequeathed to future generations and for its huge and costly bailouts for speculators and high flyers, and very little for families and ordinary citizens.
As a consequence, on the whole, Americans are today poorer than when this duo took power eight years ago, while the gap between the very rich and the average American has never been wider. It has been a regime that has borrowed and borrowed, debased the currency, waged unnecessary wars and doled out defense contracts in the most reckless possible way, with a minimum of oversight and accountability.
• International Mess: An Irresponsible Attempt to rekindle the Cold War
Internationally, Bush and Cheney not only started a war against Iraq, a country that had never attacked the United States, but they also did their utmost to recklessly restart the Cold War with Russia. They did that by unilaterally abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, by transforming NATO into an offensive military alliance and by installing anti-missile sites, manned by American soldiers, in former Warsaw Pact countries, such as Poland and the Czech Republic, and in former Soviet republics, right next to Russia's borders.
The Bush-Cheney administration designed a policy of encircling Russia by arming pro-U.S. European client states. That is why they have directly provoked Russia by incorporating six former Warsaw Pact nations and three former soviet republics in the now offensive and U.S.-controlled military alliance that is NATO. They went as far as to openly support and arm aggression-prone governments in some former Soviet republics, especially in Georgia, the birthplace of Stalin. All this reflects a pro-active and aggressive military stance against Russia designed to provoke Russia and restart the Cold War, thus dangerously increasing the chances of a nuclear world war.
Let us recall that when Khrushchev's Soviet Union tried to install missiles in Cuba in 1962, it nearly started a world war. Now, half a century later, with Bush-Cheney, the brinkmanship is on the other side. They have acted irresponsibly in provoking Russia, as if they did not mind restarting a cold war with that country. Russian exasperation was well expressed by then Russian President Vladimir Putin when, in 2007, he said that “The United States [under Bush and Cheney] has overstepped its national borders in every way, and as a result, no one feels safe. . . . such a policy stimulates an arms race.”
• Disrespect of Military Advice
George W. Bush will be remembered as the man who brought within the walls of the White House not only corruption and incompetence in nearly every field of activity—as well as a lack of moral fortitude in approving torture—but also a quasi dictatorial gangster mentality in dealing with Congress, with the military, with other governments and with political opponents in general. For instance, Bush fired more generals and admirals than any other head of state since Adolf Hitler in Germany, some seventy years ago. Among others, Bush fired or forced into early retirement Gen. Eric K. Shinseki; Gen. John Abizaid; Gen. George Casey; and Adm. William J. Fallon, then top U.S. commander in the Middle East.
• A Propaganda-prone Administration
But perhaps one of the greatest indictments of the Bush-Cheney administration is the way it has used crude covert propaganda techniques worthy of a totalitarian regime. Indeed, it has launched a sophisticated propaganda campaign to manipulate information and public opinion that has had the effect of undermining democracy and the freedom of information. For one, it has subverted the major American TV and radio networks by provided them with false independent "analysts".
Second, it has paid journalists to push surreptitiously for government programs. Third, it has intervened within news organizations, using the power of government to have journalists and producers fired when they didn't toe the government line. Fourth, the Bush administration has embarked upon the business of censoring movies. And that is only the tip of the iceberg, considering how pervasive the Bush-Cheney administration's direct and indirect control of the media has been. Never has American journalism and U.S. corporate media been so corrupt and complicit, and this is because the United States has never had such a corrupt administration, i.e. the 2001-2009 Bush-Cheney administration.
• Conclusion
To conclude, it should be obvious by now to anybody who has eyes to see that the Texan politician named George W. Bush, son of former President George H. Bush, was unqualified for high office. He has amply and tragically demonstrated it. This is a politician who presided over an administration that has acted as a wrecking crew, destroying most of everything it has touched. [For more analysis on that, see my book "The New American Empire".]
In its countless failures, the Bush-Cheney administration has been an unhealthy mixture, rarely seen in a democracy, of immorality, lawlessness and incompetence. —It won't be missed by most people, both in the U.S. and around the world.
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at: rodrigue.tremblay@ yahoo.com.
He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'.
Visit his blog site at http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.