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Sunday, October
19, 2008 The Failed Presidency of George W.
Bush: A Dismal Legacy. --[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. (to be continued next week) ___________________________________________________________ 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 www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog. Author's Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com/ Check Dr. Tremblay's coming book "The
Code for Global Ethics"
at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ _____________________________________ Posted, Sunday,
October 19, 2008, at 5:30 am Email to a friend: http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1100 Send contact, comments or commercial reproduction
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