Richard A. Stitt: The Sad Legacy of George W. Bush: All Glory is Fleeting

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Richard A. Stitt

"For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph - a tumultuous parade.... A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting." -- from the movie "Patton".

Like everything else our country has been subjected to concerning Iraq, the Status of Forces Agreement, a unilateral treaty executed by G.W. Bush, is a sham. Supposedly, the agreement allows U.S. troops to remain in Iraq until 2011 but continues some troop presence for an indefinite period. The "agreement" circumvented Congressional input and review in Bush's continued and deliberate show of contempt for the American people.

The mantra, "The surge worked," has been accepted by the mainstream media as a fait accompli who use the past tense verb, "worked," as a factual, unequivocal successful Bush policy. Hence, Bush's legacy-seeking statement, "I'd like to be a president [known] as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace," Bush told his sister, Dorothy Bush Koch.

That is an outright lie. What Bush wants historians to remember is far different from the reality and truth: Bush bombed, invaded, and occupied a broken country that had absolutely nothing to do with America's security or interests. What Bush did accomplish, however, was the liberation of over 100,000 Iraqi men, women, and children from living their lives.

In addition, Bush's use of military force drove 4.5 million Iraqis, mostly Sunnis, from their homes and out of their country. Those recently returning Iraqi refugees from Syria, Egypt, and Jordan (most of whose visas expired) found their homes and neighborhoods occupied by Shiite squatters protected by Sunni-hating Shiite militias. Bush helped achieve peace? Hardly!

The "surge" of U.S. troops in Baghdad amounted to nothing less than a purge and an ethnic cleansing policy enforced by Bush and his fawning generals who continue to spout "The surge worked" mantra. But what most of these senior military officers won't admit openly, whether we stay or leave, is that Iraq is likely to experience an inexorable and inevitable reign of sectarian violence for decades under the authoritarian policies enforced by Iraqi Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his ruling Shiite majority.

The Status of Forces agreement will collapse rapidly once Bush leaves office on January 20, 2009. The agreement is a farce.

Bush has cemented his legacy:

1. Blood on his hands for every U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan since he abandoned that war in March 2003 in order to launch his vanity war in Iraq.

2. Blood on his hands for putting 4,209 U.S. military in body bags, almost half of whom were blown to bits by indiscriminate roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices; wounding over 30,000 more U.S. military, many of whom lost arms, legs, and eyes, suffering lifetime disabling injuries.

3. Blood on his hands for ordering the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens for no other reason than he, as he stated to a reporter days before the Iraq invasion on March 19, 2003, "got to make the call."

4. Personally responsible for bringing about a worldwide financial crisis and economic collapse when he began the policy of borrowing (begging) foreign countries such as Japan and China to bankroll his fantasy of converting the entire Middle East to democracy at the end of a gun barrel. That bill has yet to be totaled up but it is estimated by some experts that the cost will exceed $3 trillion.

5. Complete abdication of his oath of office and breach of trust with the American people while he burdened our citizens with a $10 billion-per-month fiasco in Iraq; failure to confront major problems at home such as the Katrina damage and I-35 bridge collapse in Minnesota, increasing unemployment, poverty, and lack of health care coverage for 47 million Americans.

6. G.W. Bush sat by while our nation's infrastructure collapsed, allowing his greed-infested constituency that he once referred to as the "haves and have mores" to run amok on Wall Street. He and his Securities and Exchange Commission cipher Christopher Cox refused to enforce any regulation or provide oversight into the fraudulent, criminal theft of investors' money by the Ponzi Scheme corporate fat cats.

Once swamped by their gambling debts, they convinced Bush's Feeding Chairman Ben Bernanke to hand them more free money when he lowered the interest rate they can borrow to 1%. When that money ran out, they turned to another sycophant, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who raided the U.S. taxpayers repeatedly to bail out the faltering piggy banks that allowed the current conveyor belt of "free" money to continue.

Finally, though the Bush 8-year detritus has yet to be fully analyzed, we know this: Bush has torn down the integrity and honor of the office of the presidency; installed in our federal courts partisan, activist judges hostile to individual liberties and freedoms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution; incited political, religious, and partisan divisions; and allowed terrorism to thrive and proliferate while he myopically focused on an Iraq War legacy that is wrapped entirely in his self-glorification.

On January 20, 2009, this sad and disastrous chapter in American history will end. The election of Barack Obama on November 4 was an emphatic repudiation of the George W. Bush imperial presidency-by-decree. All glory is fleeting.

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

Richard A. Stitt
Austin, Texas

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