As I predicted, our former Presidents whitewashed President Bush’s White House record at the Bush Library dedication yesterday. The Presidential Library Golden Rule: Do unto others as you hope they will do unto you.
Every President is the hero of their own library. They seek to preserve the narrative they think they deserve.
The New York Times reported that our former Presidents praised President Bush for protecting the nation after September 11th and for a host of other projects. The Times also noted that the “words Iraq and Afghanistan, however, never passed Mr. Bush’s lips, or those of the four other presidents who spoke.”
The pictures accompanying the Time’s story are interesting. Check closely and you’ll see former Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush’s Iraq buddy. Chased from office, Blair is now listening in on Israel/Palestine world. What Blair does after listening is a mystery.
Seated next to Blair was Condoleezza Rice, another conservative fan favorite. My youngest son once referred to her mockingly as Mahatma Condi. I can’t think of a better name for our warmongering globetrotting gal.
Seated with Blair and Rice but only barely mentioned – no invitation to speak! – was Bush’s Vice-President, Dick Cheney. Enough said.
These gatherings are a rogues gallery of posers and criminals.
After the Bush Library dedication, President Obama helicoptered down on Marine One to Waco, where a memorial was held for the firefighters who died in the explosion in West, just 20 miles north of Waco. Amid flag-draped coffins flanked by large photographs of the fallen firefighters, President Obama once again functioned as Comforter-in-Chief:
“We may not all live in Texas but we’re neighbors too. We’re Americans too, and we stand with you and we do not forget. We’ll be there even after the cameras leave and after the attention turns elsewhere.”
I’m not so sure about the forgetting part. During the Bush Library dedication the massive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan weren’t even mentioned. The physical and mental suffering of those who survived those wars will be with them for the rest of their lives. For the surviving wounded, as a nation, we are not even there now.
So praising President Bush for his concern for the wounded and the fallen is too easy. The issue is why we were there in the first place. What is the meaning of their sacrifice?
Yet the question remains less about the future than the past. Pursuing those wars was the mistake, not the pledged and questionable after-care for the wounded. And if we are with the survivors of the explosion in West, where were the inspections of the plant that contained so much ammonium nitrate it’s a wonder that the crater created was only 93 feet down and 10 feet deep?
Who was waiting to greet the President and the families of the deceased firefighters at the memorial location? It was none other than Ken Starr, now President of Baylor University.
Yes, that Ken Starr. A charter member of America’s rogues gallery.
It’s as if there’s an unwritten protocal that follows every manmade disaster, be it a bombing, schoolyard shooting or factory explosion.
always there’s a sort of coming together with shows of solidarity in mourning the losses, such as last week’s “we are all bostonian” rallies in various communities, sometimes with the attendees chanting the requisite “USA, USA, USA”
at the same time there’s the who dunnit? when the culprit(s) are identified, such as in this boston marathon bombing), msm (& now the internet) force feed a seemingly insatiable public with stories (whether real or made up doesn’t matter) about them, and in so doing demonize them.
said demonization (with its subsequent trials & punishments) somehow enables closure, at least in the minds of most americans – “look, they did it, so i’m in the clear and so is my country.”
soon the thought of that latest catastrophe is but a dim memory.
until the next one occurs & then once again the process is set in motion.
and thus it is that the underlying causes of these catastrophes are never pursued.
which explains why they keep recurring.
Makes me want to puke.
the contortions Obama is doing to wiggle out of israel’s attempts to manipulate us into a war against Syria on their behalf is a thing to behold … Obama got israel to apologize to Turkey for the flotilla massacre (but not to the American’s family), got them to state they will stop using white phosphorus, and got them to say the will seek a two-state solution … but the israel game-plan of using the U.S. to fight their wars for them to make them the regional superpower continues apace anyway
“These gatherings are a rogues gallery of posers and criminals.”
Obama shouldn’t be thought of as a poser member of this rogues gallery but rather as one of its criminals. Guantanimo is still open for business complete with feeding tubes stuffed down the nostrils of the prisoners on hunger strike. Gitmo prisoners dying of starvation in US custody isn’t something Obama will want to have remembered in the annals of his Presidential Library.
“… where were the inspections of the plant that contained so much ammonium nitrate it’s a wonder that the crater created was only 93 feet down and 10 feet deep?”
The plant was last inspected in 1985. But c’mon, Marc, we don’t have time to split hairs over a giant ammonium nitrate bomb when our entire nation is trembling in fear of nineteen year olds armed with rice cookers.