National Day of Mourning
Accolades Pour In
That’s just a sample. Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a lengthy supportive statement on friendship, service, and love.
The Intercept offers a more sobering view.
The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice
Please consider The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice.
THE TRIBUTES to former President George H.W. Bush, who died on Friday aged 94, have been pouring in from all sides of the political spectrum. He was a man “of the highest character,” said his eldest son and fellow former president, George W. Bush. “He loved America and served with character, class, and integrity,” tweeted former U.S. Attorney and /#resistance icon Preet Bharara. According to another former president, Barack Obama, Bush’s life was “a testament to the notion that public service is a noble, joyous calling. And he did tremendous good along the journey.” Apple boss Tim Cook said: “We have lost a great American.”
“When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms,” as my colleague Glenn Greenwald has argued, because it leads to “false history and a propagandistic whitewashing of bad acts.” The inconvenient truth is that the presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush had far more in common with the recognizably belligerent, corrupt and right-wing Republican figures who came after him — his son George W. and the current orange-faced incumbent — than much of the political and media classes might have you believe.
Facts matter. The 41st president of the United States was not the last Republican moderate or a throwback to an imagined age of conservative decency and civility; he engaged in race baiting, obstruction of justice, and war crimes. He had much more in common with the two Republican presidents who came after him than his current crop of fans would like us to believe.
- He ran a racist election campaign. The name of Willie Horton should forever be associated with Bush’s 1988 presidential bid.
- He made a dishonest case for war. Thirteen years before George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction to justify his invasion and occupation of Iraq, his father made his own set of false claims to justify the aerial bombardment of that same country.
- Then there is the fabrication of intelligence. Bush deployed U.S. troops to the Gulf in August 1990 and claimed he was doing so in order “to assist the Saudi Arabian Government in the defense of its homeland.” As Scott Peterson wrote in the Christian Science Monitor in 2002, “Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated… that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.” Yet when reporter Jean Heller of the St. Petersburg Times acquired her own commercial satellite images of the Saudi border, she found no signs of Iraqi forces; only an empty desert.
- He committed war crimes. Under Bush Sr., the U.S. dropped a whopping 88,500 tons of bombs on Iraq and Iraqi-occupied Kuwait, many of which resulted in horrific civilian casualties. In February 1991, for example, a U.S. airstrike on an air-raid shelter in the Amiriyah neighborhood of Baghdad killed at least 408 Iraqi civilians. According to Human Rights Watch, the Pentagon knew the Amiriyah facility had been used as a civil-defense shelter during the Iran-Iraq war and yet had attacked without warning. It was, concluded HRW, “a serious violation of the laws of war.”
- He refused to cooperate with a special counsel. The Iran-Contra affair, in which the United States traded missiles for Americans hostages in Iran, and used the proceeds of those arms sales to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua, did much to undermine the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Yet his vice president’s involvement in that controversial affair has garnered far less attention. “The criminal investigation of Bush was regrettably incomplete,” wrote Special Counsel Lawrence Walsh, a former deputy attorney general in the Eisenhower administration, in his final report on the Iran-Contra affair in August 1993.
- He escalated the racist war on drugs. In September 1989, in a televised addressto the nation from the Oval Office, Bush held up a bag of crack cocaine which he said had been “seized a few days ago in a park across the street from the White House . . . . It could easily have been heroin or PCP.” Yet a Washington Post investigation later that month revealed that federal agents had “lured” the drug dealer to Lafayette Park so they could make an “undercover crack buy in a park better known for its location across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House than for illegal drug activity” (the dealer didn’t know where the White House was and even asked the agents for directions). Bush cynically used this prop — the bag of crack — to call for a $1.5 billion increase in spending on the drug war, declaiming: “We need more prisons, more jails, more courts, more prosecutors.”
That’s a more complete assessment of George H.W. Bush. And for that, we have a “national day of mourning”.
https://twitter.com/TravisMannon/status/1068929887103315969
Why should we have to wait until someone is dead?
We should charge people with war crimes when they are alive.
His son was much worse.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Thank you for taking the time to write and sharing this.
I don’t know if this is a good news or a bad one. After all he was an old man and his time was approaching soon and his son is to follow him soon and meet their creator now.
Boy did this thread spring back to life! It seems many here are looking at Bush through the prism of a past America, before they knew how corrupt it was. Back in HW’s day probably none of us knew what the country would become. I even attended a big rally of his in ’88 when my mom pulled me out of school to see him at an airfield. We got there ridiculously early so I was way up front. The select few of us in the hangar yelled “BUSH” and paused while the mass of people outside yelled “QUAYLE”. This went on for a while and sticks in my memory. Little did I know back then the dark path we were already on.
It’s true that HW did fewer awful things than his successors, but a big part of that was his relatively brief time in office. He was Deep State to the core (along with the rest of his family) and to my knowledge has never opposed the bankers and MIC run amok. He never had anything near an Eisenhower moment of clarity.
My two least favorite things about Bush are the path we took sanctioning the Iraqis after Desert Storm, which were meant to KEEP Hussein in power and cruelly punished the Iraqi people. He was also part of Russia’s transition from the Soviet system to the cesspool of corruption known as the Yeltsin era, where their leader drank himself into a stupor while the nation crumbled. Rather than seize the moment to bring Russians into the fold, we stuck their noses in their own failure, a la the Germans after 1918. A real opportunity was missed there.
A Libertarian view is inconclusive IMHO. We were indeed asked by Kuwait to help.
I am not sure we have all the facts. That’s a problem.
I blasted H, but he is far better than W. None of the recent presidents deserves any accolades. You have to go back to Eisenhower for genuine praise.
And maybe I do not even have those facts, but at least he seemed anti-war and even warned about it.
I am not a hard-core Libertarian. I believe the government has a legitimate role but it is very limited.
Hard-core Libertarians are actually anarchists. I am not an anarchist.
Libertarians have no united view on abortion. Religion gets in the way. I support right-to-choose. Many don’t.
You are asking about consensus when none exists. I thank you for a thoughtful question.
Mish
Exactly, Mish. At it’s core, Libertarian ideals are easy to define. Applying them requires decisions where people can, and do, differ. A person should be able to do what they want with their own body, so long as it doesn’t affect others. But, what if you believe the fetus is a person from conception? What if you believe it is, from viability? In that case, an abortion isn’t about your own body, it is affecting someone else.
Or, suppose we turn to drugs. You start with the belief that people should be able to do whatever drugs they want to, yet, suppose that leads to more crime? Now how do you decide what is permissible?
Or, when it comes to war, in theory you don’t intervene in the affairs of other countries. But, what the US had sat aside, and allowed Nazi Germany to conquer all of Europe and Africa? Would that have eventually affected us? Were we better off to intervene when we did, rather than later, when it finally affected us?
As Mish has said, there is no clear consensus among Libertarians on a variety of issues, because pragmatic problems prevent the clean, clear application of Libertarian principles.
Not one comment on George Bush and a New World Order. That’s his biggest crime.
A longtime resident of Massachusetts. The W. Horton event was not about race.
It was about Massachusetts messed up liberal penal system.
We have corrupt judges as well today.
I read The Intercept piece and the Horton argument is defective.
Obama’s droning of people was clearly a war crime.
Also giving guns to Free Syrian Army that ended up with ISIS is another clear war crime.
Obama also let ISIS run their operations freely and fund their caliphate since under Obama ISIS oil shipments to Turkey were NOT bombed.
Trump started bombing them and Caliphate collapse started.
Also attacking Libya and killing Gaddafi another war crime (although it was a French fighter jet that bombed Gaddafi’s convoy when he was trying to escape Libya).
Gaddafi really should have given money to Clinton Foundation and a nice birthday president to Bill Clinton instead of funding Sarkozy’s presidential election campaign in France.
Sarkozy killed Gaddafi because his son had threatened to reveal the funding and Sarkozy was still thinking about running for a second term.
In the end Sarkozy lost to Hollande.
Saddam asked from US about what is their view on Iraq’s relationship with Kuwait.
This was after Kuwait and Iraq were both pumping oil from the same oil field that is partially in Kuwait and partially in Iraq.
The incompetent and clueless US official stated that it is strictly between Iraq and Kuwait and US will NOT get involved.
Saddam took this as a sign he could invade Kuwait.
After all Saddam was USA’s golden boy having attacked Iran and killed lots of Iranians and getting US arms to do it and keeping the Iran-Iraq war going for about 10 years.
Rumsfeld even went to give Saddam a hug in Baghdad because USA was so pleased Iraq was fighting Iran and killing lots of Iranians.
Before Saddam started gassing Kurds in North Iraq after they had a rebellion and wanted their own country Iraq had been using those same chemical weapons to gas Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war.
Reagan and George H. W. Bush were as happy as can be while Saddam was killing massive numbers of Iranians and waging an about 10 year war on Iran.
Also remember that Reagan was the original amnesty president and Reagan’s 1986 amnesty to millions upon millions illegals made tens of millions of other illegals come to USA after 1986 since they heard that millions had gotten amnesty and thought another amnesty would be just a matter of time and in the meantime all their kids born in USA would get birthright citizenship and policy since Reagan has been that if a kid has gotten birthright citizenship his parents also get to stay in USA.
George H. W. Bush was involved in all of these policies and it is likely that since Reagan had Alzheimer soon after presidency that it was already affecting him in late 1980’s and therefore George H. W. Bush was probably the one who said that amnesty is a good idea to Reagan and controlled him.
YES!!! the Kuwaiti’s were slant drilling into Iraqi oil fields along their border. I believe Iraq even asked the world to help protect its mineral rights through negotiations. When the world ignored Iraq’s request, Iraq had to resort to “self defense”.
“Yup, it is ridiculous to list nearly all recent US presidents to be war criminals. “
That asinine comment is precisely why the military war complex exists and why perpetual war is likely.
I know you are anti-war. By your standard, all living US presidents should be rounded up and sent to The Hague in the Netherlands to stand for trials. Not even our most progressive politicians are advocating your extremist position.
War is an extremist position.
Don’t hold back Mish. Tell us what you really think. LoL.
What is funny about that? What do you really think?
“Read My Lips… NO New Taxes”
You guys would write the same thing about the pope or Jesus. Never fucking happy. He was an honorable man and a true patriot. I believe he did what he thought was best for the country, not a self obsessed arrogant POS like most of his successors. The desert storm war article leaves out a few important points. One is that Sadam was given the chance to withdraw before the conflict was initiated. Even though initially he was given the green light prior to the invasion the situation must have changed afterward. It doesn’t make sense otherwise. You cite one article like that is the only side of the story. There are always two sides and unfortunately most people are to ignorant to realize that.
Yup, it is ridiculous to list nearly all recent US presidents to be war criminals. The number of heads of state and government indicted and convicted in the International Criminal Court is a very small list.
This is a great post, particularly the part about people never being happy. I mean really, who would look at 2018 America, the sort of society that HW and his successors helped create, and be anything less than ecstatic? It’s not like we’re some sort of giant debt ponzi or anything.
I am still happy. Merry Christmas
Thx, and same to you. Every Xmas will be merry, right up until the day of financial reckoning.
Just another John McCain asbestos casket moment.
Number 1: George W Bush and Dick Cheney
Next is difficult
Obama, Trump, George H Bush, LBJ, and Hillary are all guilty or war crimes.
I would prosecute them all. Drone policy alone is sufficient.
Apologies from 2banana accepted in advance.
Repeating this comment, the first seems to have vanished.
MIsh
The invasion of Iraq was one of the biggest mistakes in modern American history.
However – the process GWB used was proper, constitutional and a legal procedure.
Iraq was in violation of 16 UN Resolutions.
The House voted for the invasion of Iraq (296-133) on October 10, 2002.
The Senate voted for the invasion of Iraq (77-23) on October 11, 2002 to include “yes” votes from Clinton (D-NY), Dodd (D-CT), Feinstein (D-CA), Kerry (D-MA), Nelson (D-FL), Reid (D-NV), and Schumer (D-NY).
The invasion of Iraq didn’t start until March 20, 2003 giving Saddam nearly five months to comply with the UN resolutions AFTER the vote to go to war.
What ELSE could have GWB done?
The entire house and senate voted in a bipartisan and OVERWHELMING manner. There was plenty of time for debate and for Saddam to comply to the UN resolutions.
Now – compare/contrast to the obama invasion Syria and the destruction of Libya. Or to the drone strikes all across the middle east and africa.
And we can only HOPE future presidents follow the same procedure for any new conflicts.
Thank you for finally admitting that both parties are hopelessly corrupt. I was wondering when you’d finally muster the courage to do that!
The downfall of America is a bipartisan affair, obviously.
Feel free to post a better process for deciding on the initiation of combat operations.
If you don’t have one, why are you complaining?
Complaining?!? I’m just proud of you and your newfound ability to find fault with both parties.
A hat tip to you, sir. Well done.
First this is about the father. I don’t particular like Jr. President Bush 41 purposely didn’t carry out an invasion into Iraq. He stated that Sadam was controllable and the an invasion would result in utter chaos that we could no control. I remember Colin Powel also stating this in no uncertain terms. I do believe Jr wasn’t listening and the WMD story was a load of crap deliberately spewed out as propaganda to enlist citizen support. The oldest trick in the book by all governments.
Any white guy in any role in government is a racist. Those are the modern standards.
Any minority in government can not be a racist. That is the rule.
No matter what they do.
Mish will never call for the arrest, trial and jailing of obama.
No matter if his war crimes are much, much worse.
“Hey, I am pretty good at killing people…:
Wonder who you’d like better between Trump or the Bush clan. It’s difficult to support both, given their feelings toward each other.
Gotta hand it to you, always striving to walk the fine line of partisanship no matter the circumstances. That takes dedication!
Did Trump do this because he is hoping for the same when he dies? Me, I hope to spit on Trump’s grave one day.
Trump’s not the, nor even a, problem. Just as H.W. wasn’t.
The ability of the position they hold/held, to negatively influence the lives of others, is. Focus relentlessly on changing that.
And ONLY on changing that. At any cost, damn all possible torpedoes. Regardless of the supposed number of dead kids, tanks in the streets and collapsed everything that the regime profiteers claim will result. Leave petulant look-at-me displays undertaken long past the time when any of them could have any real effect to lesser beings.
I wonder if the newspeakers will call Trump “humble” too, when he dies….. He’d probably consider it an insult..
Fact of the matter is, all leaders are self promoting scum. They wouldn’t win the big price if they weren’t. The guy with almost no scruples about doing what it takes, will always lose to the one with none at all. Stalin was no different than Jefferson. Except Jefferson had the insight to recognize this, hence attempted to, a priori, limit how much damage he, and others of his ilk, could cause; once he weaseled, bakstabbed and lied himself into the much sought after position of scumbag in chief.
George Washington and family were, by far, the richest family in the Americas.
When he joined the rebels and revolution, his lands were confiscated, his fortune was seized and he and family were hunted. If captured, he expected to be hung.
At the end of the revolution, he was offered to be King of the new United States. He turned it down.
At the end of his second term of president, he turned down running for a certain third term.
Could you imagine a Gate. Bezo or Musk doing anything like this today?
In this cynical age, it hard for folks like you to believe there are better men than yourself.
… And then, as soon as he was President instead of King, Washington’s administration started shaking down hard scrabble farmers for Whiskey tax. Going so far as to raise an honest to goodness army to go after them. Setting a precedent for the War on Drugs, I guess….
All this, despite how the impossibility of collecting almost anything from hard scrabble frontiersmen, rendered the whole exercise an almost zero net revenue tax. Just so he could avoid the discomfort of simply, and cheaply, collecting the money from those in his wealthy, well connected Eastern Seaboard social circle. Whose stuff were just sitting there, ripe for grabbing if the new government felt they absolutely needed more revenue.
I have no doubt Washington was a better man than I am. The guy’s a veritable legend. I’m definitely not. But he’s still looking out for himself. And for the parents of the children his children plays with in school, lest his kids end up ostracized… Ensuring the only way to prevent him from causing harm, is to restrict his power sufficiently to prevent him from causing much one way or the other. Just as he, as a champion of limited government, intended.
I would like to point out that a major reason – quite possibly the main reason – why Washington ended up opposing the British crown and joining the revolution was that the British government issued a decree that seriously hampered his land speculation ventures. Several other founders were likewise inconvenienced. Mind, that doesn’t mean that I think the man had no admirable traits. He remains highly quotable to this day, and compared to modern-day politicians he is practically a saint (and that goes for most of his contemporary co-conspirators too). Nor does it mean I think the revolution was a bad idea, on the contrary. To my mind things started to go slightly off track when it was thought the States should go beyond the very loose federation they had formed with the declaration of independence. But I don’t want to digress – my point is only that even the most fondly remembered political leaders are rarely pure as the driven snow if one takes a really close look at them.