[Peace-discuss] The End of the Road for George W. Bush…(?)

[Morton K. Brussel]

Is Chris Hedges and optimist, a realist?  The article below should be  
read together with the comments that follow at Common Dreams:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/14/6354/

Published on Monday, January 14, 2008 by TruthDig.com
The End of the Road for George W. Bush

by Chris Hedges

The Gilbert and Sullivan charade of statesmanship played out by  
George W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the  
Middle East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule. Despots  
stripped of power are transformed from monsters into buffoons. And  
this is the metamorphosis that is eating away at the Bush presidency.

Bush stood in Jerusalem, uncomfortable and palpably bored. He mouthed  
platitudes about a peace settlement that mocked the humanitarian  
crisis he aided and abetted in Gaza, the rapacious land grab by  
Israel in the West Bank and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The  
diminished George Bush, increasingly irrelevant at home and abroad,  
is fading into insignificance. A year from now one half expects to  
see him stand up at the next president’s inauguration and screech  
“I’m melting! I’m melting!” as he sinks into a puddle of slime. He  
will return, I expect, to his ranch, where he will be able to spend  
the rest of his life doing the only task for which he has shown any  
aptitude-cutting down brush with a chain saw.

He may yet rise again to torment us with an attack on Iran,  
condemning more innocents to slaughter. He and his cigar-smoking soul  
mate Ehud Olmert would like to go out with one more flash of mayhem  
and violence. But even this will not ultimately save him. Bush will  
soon be reduced to the cipher he once was, left to spend the rest of  
his life trying to salvage a legacy of shame and deceit. In a just  
world he would be put on trial, if not by the International Criminal  
Court of Justice then by the U.S. Congress. He would be forced to  
face up to his lies and wars of aggression. But the moral rot that  
infects the nation has seeped into the bowels of the legislative as  
well as the executive branch.

World leaders, including those whom Bush desperately wants to  
intimidate, now dismiss him. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali  
Khamenei said a few days ago that relations with the United States  
are of “no benefit to the Iranian nation. The day such relations are  
of benefit, I will be the first one to approve of that.”

Bush will have flown from Israel to Palestine to Kuwait to Bahrain to  
the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia to Egypt in search of a  
legacy, one that he hopes will lift up his name in history. But,  
isolated and deluded, he has yet to grasp that he and the United  
States are reviled and detested for our violence, arrogance and  
greed. The bands played on the tarmac. He was toasted at state  
dinners. But even our allies, including Kuwait and Egypt, know Bush  
is a danger to himself and others.

He publicly displayed his inability to connect rhetoric with reality.  
He promised peace and cooperation, a new era, a Palestinian homeland.  
He promised solutions that will arise from negotiations that do not  
exist. Negotiations, in his eyes, are always about to begin. They  
were about to begin a year ago. They were about to begin with  
Annapolis. They are about to begin now. The messy issues between the  
Israelis and Palestinians that he and his administration have never  
attempted to address-the borders, the expanding Jewish settlements  
and outposts, the plight of Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem-will  
all be seamlessly solved … one day. But the brutal reality of the  
Israeli occupation barrels forward. The Jewish settlements and  
outposts continue to be expanded. The crisis in Gaza, with the cuts  
in fuel and electricity, the deadly army incursions and airstrikes,  
has turned the world’s largest walled prison into a swamp of human  
misery. And huge new settlements, like Har Homa, continue to rise up  
on Palestinian soil.

When Bush met with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah  
he blithely defended the patchwork of Israeli roadblocks that have  
turned the West Bank into a series of ringed Palestinian ghettos. The  
roadblocks, he told Abbas, are necessary for Israeli security. He  
announced that the 1949 Green Line, the borders established by the  
United Nations, would never be restored. There would be no  
discussion, he said, of the status of Jerusalem. And the plight of  
Palestinian refugees would be solved by setting up an international  
fund, meaning, of course, that none would ever return. In short, he  
offered an unequivocal endorsement of right-wing Israeli policy with  
not a murmur of dissent. And the Palestinians can either have it  
rammed down their throat or rot. Bush will be back, he has promised,  
in May to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the  
Jewish state. Olmert, no doubt, will again be fulsome in his praise,  
which is probably what Bush’s trip to the Middle East is, at its  
core, really about. Bush desperately wants someone to pretend with  
him that he is an agent for peace and statesmanship. Olmert, who  
knows the callow American leader will give him everything he desires,  
is happy to oblige.

But as Bush basks in the glow of his own fantasy, the suffering in  
Gaza, one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, along with the  
savage occupation of Iraq, continues to fuel widespread anger and  
rage. Bush has spent his time in office bolstering the Middle East’s  
most despotic regimes, including that of Gen. Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.  
He approved a $20-billion arms package for these states. He has  
backed efforts to crush mainstream Islamic groups that have electoral  
legitimacy and popular support. He has stood by as these regimes have  
stifled democratic dissent, and he has, with Israeli encouragement,  
isolated governments, even friendly governments, in the Middle East  
that raised feeble protests. But his day is past. There is open  
revolt. Opinion polls show that two-thirds of Palestinians, and three- 
fourths of Israelis, do not believe Bush can affect events in the  
Palestinian territories.

The agenda of the Bush White House is exposed as irrelevant, myopic  
and counterproductive. Most Arab countries are in open defiance of  
Washington and are actively reaching out to Iran.

“As long as they [Iran] have no nuclear program … why should we  
isolate Iran? Why punish Iran now?” Arab League Secretary-General Abu  
Moussa told The Washington Post.

The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed  
ElBaradei, is in Iran for talks. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  
attended December’s Gulf Cooperation Council summit. The Iranian  
president attended the just-completed hajj in Mecca at the invitation  
of the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah. Tehran is exploring the  
resumption of diplomatic ties with Egypt, cut since the 1979  
revolution, and has offered to cooperate with Cairo in the production  
of nuclear energy. And the Syrian and Lebanese governments have  
ignored Washington’s warnings to sever ties with Hezbollah and Hamas.

It is the end of the road for George Bush. The world takes less and  
less notice of him. He strutted and swaggered across the stage. He  
bellowed and raged. He plundered and murdered. And now he wants to be  
anointed as a peacemaker. His presidency, like his life, has been a  
tragic waste. But he at least he has a life. There are tens of  
thousands of mute graves in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan that  
stand as stark testaments to his true legacy. If he wants to redeem  
his time in office he should kneel before one and ask for forgiveness.

Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for  
nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is  
the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on  
America.“



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