[Peace-discuss] Our leader

[C. G. Estabrook]

...The president remains a stunted brat and a coward at the core, dodging
rules he forces others to abide by with unforgiving strictness. Festooned
in a flight jacket he never deserved, Bush has ordered National Guard
troops into a bloody desert war he and his chickenhawk cronies launched
under fabricated pretexts. Then in order to hand out tax breaks to the
super-rich and billion-dollar contracts to favored arms makers, Bush
scrimped on the funding of his precious war itself: too few troops,
under-armed, over-worked, operating with no occupation plan and no exit
strategy.

In their quest to transfer every possible federal dollar to their fatcat
base, the Bush regime even went so far as to try to slash combat pay and
separation allowances and increase co-payments for the treatment of those
maimed in battle. Although he opted out of the Guard early, Bush has now
implemented (perhaps illegally) "stop-losses" orders, a kind gang-pressing
by Oval Office fiat that keeps National Guard and Reserve troops in Iraq
far beyond their contracted tour of duty. In essence, they are war slaves.

When the Iraqi resistance surfaced with a vengeance after Bush made his
premature declaration of victory, the faux-warrior taunted them by
sneering, "Bring it on." They did. And more than 700 American soldiers
have perished since the delivery of that infamous sideline chant, tossed
off as if the president were still a flighty cheerleader at Andover. To
top it off, while Bush still refuses to attend funeral ceremonies for
slain soldiers, he wasted no time in trying to slash death benefits for
military families. And on and on it goes.

Explain his actions? Not then, not now, not ever.

Just as he stiffed the Flight Evaluation Board in 1972, Bush now refuses
to offer an explanation for his illegal and unjust war that has killed and
maimed tens of thousands. "I'm the commander--see, I don't need to
explain," Bush brayed in his best Mafia capo syntax to Bob Woodward. "I do
not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about
being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say
something, but I don't feel I owe anybody an explanation." That's the
distilled essence of George W. Bush from his very own mouth: a bellicose
and imperious buffoon who has never once been held to account for the
mayhem he leaves in his wake...

--Jeffrey St. Clair in today's <counterpunch.org>, based on Ian Williams'
new book *Deserter*