Sorry, Mr. President, But Your Legacy Is More Awful Than You Think

Rest assured, Mr. President, that despite what you told the Times Online today you won't be remembered solely as a war mongering president.

"Look, I think that in retrospect, you know, I could have used a different tone."

Different tone? Ya think?

War mongering is a significant aspect of your legacy, but I think we can conclude, and without much debate, that your legacy will also be one of criminality, failure and a degree of incompetence rarely achieved by any American president, much less one whose deficit of character is rivaled only by his nearly unprecedented lack of humility in the face of his unprecedented roster of inadequacies.

Sorry.

As it turns out, you won't have much control over your legacy and the history of your administration anyway. You might have some cursory input, but no-one really takes you seriously anymore and anything you put forth will be taken as just another work of fiction; another bit of propaganda.

Your legacy will ultimately be written by those of us who have been actively documenting your presidency in real time -- millions of voices authoring the narrative of your awful regime and preserving it with digital clarity one trespass at a time.

And everywhere we look, we can plainly observe your smirking, affectless footprint.

Death, poverty, war, pain, ignorance, blind patriotism, joblessness, and abandoned homes. And guess what? We're writing it down on the Internets. Your history, Mr. President, is being written at this very moment by those of us who are watching our homes collapse in value and our friends and relatives sent to places like Ramadi and Fallujah and, in some cases, Walter Reed or worse. Your history, Mr. President, isn't going to be settled and published decades from now. It's being published immediately and without the fog of memory to obscure the ugly details.

These ugly details are exhaustively researched and easily accessible.

And as they congeal into a single eight-year narrative, it's my hunch that every tragedy experienced during this dark ride will be regarded as a means to a specific end: your election to a second term and the election of successors who will carry on with your sinister tradition. The centerpiece of this tradition -- the throughline of your presidential narrative -- has been, simply put, endless war for the sake of re-election.

In fact (and contrary to your present lamentation) you wanted war even before you took office. War, by your own definition, would all but guarantee a second presidential term. You told your pre-2000 autobiographer, Mickey Herskowitz:

"One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief... My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it...If I have a chance to invade...if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."

Four years later, as you ramped up your re-election campaign, you told Tim Russert:

"I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind."

You didn't sound ashamed of your tone back then -- when you were running for your second term. Everything you managed to accomplish during your presidency was directed towards maintaining this manufactured "war president" façade. Without it, you would have been either defeated in 2004 or impeached a long time ago.

So how did you do it? History will show that you bought off the American people with $300 checks and massive tax cuts for Paris Hilton and Dick Cheney. You ruthlessly exploited the deadliest foreign attack on American soil and, subsequently, terrorized this nation and its corporate media into giving you more latitude than you otherwise deserved. You attempted to dumb down our public schools because, in your view, an educated electorate is a dangerous electorate -- less susceptible to war mongering and propaganda, right? You ignored the destruction of an entire American city because the majority of its residents probably didn't vote for you or contribute to your campaign for war in the first place. And your entire foreign policy has been constructed around deliberately inciting anti-American sentiment, thus fueling more war.

It turns out, Mr. President, that your only success is something which you appear to be walking back: your war mongering -- your cynical, self-serving and bloody "bring 'em on" legacy -- and, with it, your re-election in 2004.

If you were half the man your dwindling supporters claim that you are, you would own this actual legacy of yours, Mr. President.

If you were a better man, you would own the horror you've created for yourself and generations of Americans to come. You would take responsibility for more than your pathetic "tone" and "rhetoric" -- you would take responsibility for all of it: the lies, the casualties, the mistakes, the crimes and the cover-ups. Instead you're presently flying around the world saying that you "wanted to solve this ... in a diplomatic fashion" when we all know, based on numerous reports from insiders ranging from Scott McClellan to Richard Clarke that this is simply not true.

The historical record of your presidency has unequivocally verified that, even now as you attempt to Windex the crap off your legacy, you're lying about the war. But what's worse is that your administration's objective of fostering endless American warfare continues in Iraq and elsewhere while being endorsed by Senator McCain who has hugged-out any conflicts he might have had with your policies. And, if you and Senator McCain are lucky, the corporate media will crack open its Election Year Mad Libs script and paint Senator Obama as somehow more dangerous to the future of America than you ever were.

Your legacy, Mr. President, isn't just about war mongering. We're going to see to it that your legacy is almost entirely about how you lied us into an unnecessary war as part of an almost unspeakably horrible strategy for re-election -- as a way to mask over your inadequacies as a leader and to somehow delude future Americans into believing that your two-term presidency deserves special renown.

So good luck with all of that "different tone" crap. It's not going to work. Sorry.

Bob Cesca's Goddamn Awesome Blog! GO!

Comments

[mbaty]

You are right, the history is being written now, and not necessarily by 'the winners.' Because of the interwebs we won't have to look back on some white-washed absence-he­art-fonder History text book re-telling, like with Reagan. All of the facts are linkable right now, including many diverse points of view.

[jsarets]

Bush's most lasting legacy will be that he was such a profoundly awful president that he paved the way for President Obama to lead the world beyond the imperialism and colonialism that has characterized the past 500 years.

[Swedishgal]

My dad is an older vet of Vietnam and he has said nearly the same thing. I was shocked! I never in a million years ever dreamed this man would vote for a black man but he said he sat and thought about it and said that white men have governed for 200 years after the founding fathers and they've screwed up, let's give somebody else a chance whether they're a black male or female of either race. Too boot, we're from the south. There's hope for us yet.

[Vern58]

He will rank in the bottom 5 greats. Possibly the bottom3. Millard Fillmore and James Buchanan come to mind. Nixon and even Harding will beat him. Such a vile leader we have not seen since the Civil War.

[TRex86]

I recently spoke with a 62 year-old physician, a flight surgeon called back to service, who spent two years transporting thousands of shattered soldiers from Iraq to Germany and America. He served in Vietnam and Gulf I. They were easy. After his tour in Iraq he now has severe PTSD without ever seeing a shot fired in anger. His burden of witnessing these lives ruined for no good purpose was too much.
This war is consummate evil, imperialistic folly for which we shall pay a heavy price on the scales of justice. It is my hope that Bush, Cheney, et al will be brought before the world court just like Milosovic and tried for their crimes. We cannot brush aside the magnitude of their evil and survive as a democracy.

[eplebneesta]

Bush is easily the worst president ever. Nixon's Watergate crimes pale in comparison. It's like comparing a firecracker to Bikini Atoll. He has done more damage to the entire world than anyone I can think of in quite some time.

But as far as success is concerned, he has to be the most successful president ever. What other president has managed to complete so much of his owners' agendas? He gave the NeoCons Iraq. The execution has failed, but they got it. The war profiteers are doing well. BlackWater, KBR, etc. Unitary ezekitive program is advancing, having already obtained dictatorial powers; they just haven't been exercised yet. Health care is being run by Pharma and insurance companies. Public education, gone. Paris Hilton tax cuts, check. Lower classes squashed? Done. The list of his successes go on and on. He has handed his controllers what they paid for. His so-called failures have only affected the rest of us. His major failure has been that he could only get us to eat shit but not to like it. But he did us to give up our rights and not utter a peep. One man's success has been many others' destruction.

E Pleb Neesta
GODISNOWHERE
Blessed are the cheese makers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiDmMBIyfsU

[castaway5555]

Well written ... and to the point. Worst president ever ... and not even a contest. He's lied to the people, he's responsible for decimating the American military and destroying countless families; he's gutted the national treasury, deepened our debt and destroyed our economy, ruined our international reputation, pandering to the wealthy and turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to the suffering of New Orleans and millions of poverty-level Americans. Anything else? Let me count the ways Bush and Gang of thieves and liars have polluted this great land with ideas and political structures requiring years to undo. Oh well, just adding my own two cents.

[ThinkLiberal]

To paraphrase The Guardian (UK) after Shub's stolen 2004 election: "How can 45 million people be so dumb?", to be cheering a McSame presidency, after the utter disaster of the last 7 years.

[salidon]

It's true, Bush sux. He'll be out soon, but not before he sacrifices a few more American soldiers over in the Middle East. Can you handle that, America?

[madisonhack]

My fervent hope is that in some unimaginable scenario a prosecutor will find some way to try Bush and his crew as war criminals. He certainly is treasonous­...he intentionally misused his Constitutionally granted powers to subvert that very document and serve his own selfish interests and those of a handful of others. He deserves to go to prison for a long time.

[MtDavid]

This is my hope, too, for these treasonous men have driven America to a point that recovery will be very difficult and maybe not even possible. If they are punished, others who follow will uphold the Constitution.

[Ivar]

Here here...any­one else doing the same would go to prison. Why not him? He lied, cheated, broke the law cost thousands of lives why should he not go to jail along with cheney and rumsfeld.

[The 13 Colonies]

Amen!!!!!!­!!!!!!!!!!­!!!!!!!!!!­!!!!!!!!!!­!!!!!!!!!!­!!!!!!!!!!­!!!!!!!!!

[ThirdSection]

At best he'll get arrested if he travels abroad after his term expires.

[jnratliff]

bush has his legacy not cast in stone but in the blood sweat and tears of all the dead dying and perminatly injured and in the loss of treasure and respect.

[LeftLeanWing]

That's true,

But it is also cast in YouTube.

Where generations centuries in the future will think that he was the inspiration for Howdy Doody and Alfred E. Newman.

[fightorleave2]

Sir, while I agree with much of what you say, I can't help but notice that Bush has not failed at everything. If you ask the 30 percenters in this country, they love Bush and many of them are richer than they could have possibly imagined. in fact, I often consider that it is the media that allows Bush to be seen by the electorate as a failure or loser when the neo-con, right has achieved almost everything they wanted for pretty much the past 40 years: Bush gave them endless war, massive profits and all the rights to the multi-nationals rather than the people, essentially fascism, which is not democracy.

[pithy]

I operate on the philosophy that the blessing and the curse are one in the same.

Bush was SUCH a curse that his utter moral bankruptcy has re-engaged the American people in their government.

For many peaceful years, we were asleep - the blessing of Bush is that he woke us up.

I just wish we'd awoken six years ago, before so many innocent soldiers and Iraqi's died because Bush craved one-up-manship over his daddy.

[bhenry112]

Well put, pithy.

[americanwhocares]

Nuff said!!!

[Mykal]

America needs a george w. bush presidential library. Like the preserved concentration camp in Dachau, it will stand as a constant reminder of when men went insane.

I will buy this book for the library. It contains the story “The Pet Goat”.

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Mastery-Level-Storybook-Rainbow/dp/0026863553/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213459252&sr=8-1

.

[akaJohnQ]

George W. Bush will be remembered as an unwise and foolish President. He was dumb enough to start an unnecessary war, and too stupid to know how to finish it. He swore to protect and defend the Constuitution of the US, but he shows no respect at all for it. He and his subordinates have routinely broken the law, but none are held accountable for their crimes. Bush pledged to restore integrity to the White House, and then presided over the most corrupt administration in US history. When he leaves office, " good riddance " will be an understatement.