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

[Brussel]

I didn't catch the moralistic frenzy in Hedges piece, but then again  
I do see a danger from theocrats (anti-Darwinians). Also, I don't  
believe in a Bush metamorphosis (unborn again?). He still claims  
"All's on the table" regarding satanic Iran.  --mkb


On Jan 17, 2008, at 6:04 PM, C. G. ESTABROOK wrote:

> Hedges' moralistic frenzy seems to have got the best of him, just  
> as it did when he insisted that anti-Darwinians threaten us with  
> fascism.  It leads him here to mistake Bush Jr. for a cause rather  
> than a symptom of US imperialism.
>
> It may indeed be "the end of the road" for GWB, but only because  
> the policy that his administration followed and is following in the  
> ME is essentially continuous with that of the preceding (and  
> probably following) administration, and it is unlikely that there  
> will be any major changes in it.  The US will continue to insist on  
> controlling ME energy resources as a strangle-hold on its real  
> economic competitors, Europe and NE Asia, both vast oil importers.
>
> The dangerousness of the current administration was an artefact of  
> the 9/11/2001 attacks and the coming to power of an extreme end of  
> the US foreign policy spectrum, who still exist as a war party  
> within this administration.  But their influence has faded, perhaps  
> in part because Bush, never a neocon, has switched sides since the  
> dismissal of Rumsfeld and subsided into the arms of the FP pros in  
> State and Defense. This is the real metamorphosis of this  
> administration.
>
> There are serious internal fights continuing, perhaps even  
> including attempts to bypass the chain of command by the war party  
> (Syria bombing, live nukes across the US, fake Hormuz video,  
> etc.?).  and it is still possible that they may get their Iran  
> war.  But the struggle is larger than within the mind of GWB.
>
> Do you suppose Hedges learnt his anti-political conspiracism ("bad  
> things happen because bad people are doing them, and they have to  
> be found and stopped") at Harvard Divinity School?  It wasn't the  
> vogue when I was there, admittedly some years before him; and he  
> certainly wasn't listening to his instructors like Harvey Cox.  --CGE
>
>
>> At 01:38 PM 1/14/2008, Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>>
>>> Is Chris Hedges an 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_  
>>> <http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/ 
>>> 20080113_the_end_of_the_road_for_george_w_bush/>_
>>> _/*T**he 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 <http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/ 
>>> 732692,010908bush.article%20>_, 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_  
>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Har_Homa%20>__, continue to rise up  
>>> on Palestinian soil.
>>>
>>> When Bush _met with the Palestinian leader _ <http:// 
>>> news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7180354.stm%20>__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_ <http://www.antiwar.com/ips/mekay.php? 
>>> articleid=9042%20>__. 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_ <http:// 
>>> www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/06/ 
>>> AR2008010601574.html%20>__.
>>>
>>> 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/ <http:// 
>>> www.religioustolerance.org/isla1.htm>// _ _ <http:// 
>>> www.religioustolerance.org/isla1.htm>__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 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._ <http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 
>>> 0743284437?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>__“/
>
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