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[NOLA_C3_Discussion] Bush's Way or the Highway

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Bush's Way or the Highway

By Robert Parry

Consortium News

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091806R.shtml

 

Monday 18 September 2006

 

George W. Bush's Sept. 15 outburst - threatening to stop interrogating

terror suspects if Congress doesn't let him revise the Geneva Conventions to

permit coercive techniques - is part of a pattern of petulance that dates

back to even before the 9/11 attacks but has resurfaced as Bush faces new

challenges to his authority.

 

In summer 2001, less than six months into his presidency while

confronting congressional obstacles to his domestic program, Bush told

followers that he was ready to " go back to Crawford " if he didn't get his

way on legislation.

 

That threat came after Sen. Jim Jeffords, a Vermont Republican, joined

with the Democrats to give them narrow control of the Senate in mid-2001.

Bush also was facing defeat on a patients' bill of rights.

 

In a meeting with congressional allies, " Bush appeared to draw a line in

the sand when he indicated he always could return to Crawford, Texas, if the

liberal health juggernaut grinds him do wn, " wrote right-wing columnist

Robert D. Novak. [Washington Post, July 5, 2001]

 

Besides the patients' bill of rights, Bush found himself battling

congressional momentum in favor of new campaign-finance restrictions.

 

In the context of Bush fighting those two popular bills, Los Angeles

Times political writer Ronald Brownstein also picked up word of Bush issuing

a " back to Crawford " threat, this one recounted by a GOP lobbyist close to

the administration.

 

Bush " continues to send a signal that, 'I'm going to do what I want to

do, and if nobody likes it, I'm going to go back to Crawford', " Brownstein

wrote, quoting the lobbyist. [Los Angeles Times, July 5, 2001]

 

Back then, Republicans framed Bush's " back to Crawford " threats as a

sign of his principled leadership as well as a new self-confidence in

asserting his authority.

 

" Gone is the tentativeness of 20 months ago, of the lost man of the

early Republican debates, " wrote Ronald Reagan's speechwriter Peggy Noonan

in an article for the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. " In its place

seems an even-keeled confidence, even a robust faith in his own perceptions

and judgments. " [WSJ, June 25, 2001]

 

However, Bush's critics saw something else: a troubling

self-centeredness more benefiting an autocrat than a leader of a democratic

Republic. To them, Bush was a callow, ill-prepared politician who seemed

oblivious to the fact that he had risen to his exalted status because of

family connections and tough political tactics, not through hard work and

talent.

 

The critics noted that Bush's sense of entitlement sometimes would spill

out in his humor, when he'd put down people in his presence or he'd joked

about his preference for autocracy. " If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a

heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator, " he quipped on Dec.

18, 2000.

 

Though Bush never did quit his job, he did seek comfort back at his

ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he retreated for a month-long vacation in

August 2001.

 

The course of Bush's presidency changed dramatically on Sept. 11, 2001,

however, when al-Qaeda terrorists attacked targets in New York and

Washington. The 9/11 attacks gave Bush a new mantle as " war president " and

he exploited that opening to assert " plenary " - or unlimited - powers as

Commander in Chief.

 

With Republicans reclaiming the Senate in 2002 - and the federal courts

initially giving Bush wide latitude - Bush got pretty much whatever he

wanted and his petulance was subsumed by his new presidential swagger.

 

Mystical Leader

 

Now, five years later, Bush's supporters see an almost mystical leader

who exudes manly powers and possesses a farsighted vision for saving the

world. In one of those paeans to Bush, conservative New York Times wrote on

Sept. 14, 2006:

 

" A leader's first job is to project authority, and George Bush certainly

does that. In a 90-minute interview with a few columnists in the Oval Office

on Tuesday, Bush swallowed up the room, crouching forward to energetically

make a point or spreading his arms wide to illustrate the scope of his ideas

- always projecting confidence and intensity.

 

" He opened the session by declaring, 'Let me just first tell you that

I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right

decisions,' and he grew more self-assured from there. I interview

politicians for a living, and every time I brush against Bush I'm reminded

that this guy is different. There's none of that hunger for approval that is

common in the breed. This is the most inner-directed man on the globe.

 

" The other striking feature of his conversation is that he possesses an

unusual perception of time. Washington, and modern life in general,

encourages people to think in the short term. But Bush, who stands aloof,

thinks in long durations. "

 

Brooks's example of Bush's visionary quality was the President's

assertion that he had gotten into politics because of his " campaign against

the instant gratifications of the 1960s counterculture, " which somehow

helped qualify him " to think about the war on terror as a generations-long

struggle. "

 

Brooks made no mention of Bush's own extensive dabbling in " instant

gratifications " from his playboy life-style that included evading military

service in Vietnam, heavy drinking (at least until his 40th birthday), and

illicit drug use (which he implicitly acknowledged during Campaign 2000).

 

Like other Bush enthusiasts, Brooks also failed to consider the dangers

from an autocratic leader who is both " inner-directed " and possesses a

messianic view of the world. " Inner-directed " could be defined as impervious

to outside criticism, advice or even reality. Many of the history's most

dangerous dictators also were " inner-directed. "

 

But the only criticism of Bush that Brooks could muster was that Bush

didn't act aggressively enough in implementing his visionary programs.

 

" The sad truth is, there has been a gap between Bush's visions and the

means his administration has devoted to realize them. And when tactics do

not adjust to fit the strategy, then the strategy gets diminished to fit the

tactics, " Brooks wrote. [NYT, Sept. 14, 2006]

 

But another way of looking at Bush's presidency is that he and his

neoconservative advisers have operated in an ideological reality of their

own making, that they have too little respect for the opinions of others,

that they are hubristic and anti-democratic.

 

Return to Petulance

 

Now, with a slim majority of the US Supreme Court rejecting Bush's

claims of unlimited power and with several senior Republicans resisting

Bush's demands that he be allowed to redefine the Geneva Conventions, Bush's

petulance is returning.

 

At the Sept. 15 news conference, Bush suggested that senators - such as

John Warner and John McCain - were endangering US security by opposing his

legislation to rewrite Geneva's Common Article III to allow harsh

interrogation of detainees.

 

" We must also provide our military and intelligence professionals with

the tools they need to protect our country from another attack, " Bush said.

" And the reason they need those tools is because the enemy wants to attack

us again. "

 

Bush did not spell out his desired interrogation techniques, since he

insists that his administration does not condone torture. But the known

practices include simulating drowning by " waterboarding, " keeping prisoners

naked in excessive heat and cold, sleep deprivation, and forcing them into

painful " stress positions " for extended periods of time.

 

Bush's former Secretary of State Colin Powell joined in opposing Bush's

legislation, warning that " the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis

of our fight against terrorism. " Powell, a retired general, also cautioned

that allowing abusive interrogations of prisoners of war would open captured

US soldiers to similar abuse

 

Asked about Powell's comments on Sept. 15, the petulant Bush reappeared.

 

" If there's any comparison between the compassion and decency of the

American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic, "

Bush snapped. " I simply can't accept that. It's unacceptable to think that

there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of

America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and

children to achieve an objective. "

 

Though the Washington press corps sat mute before Bush's assertions,

there was cause to challenge Bush on his hypocrisy. The Bush administration

is responsible for slaughtering thousands of women and children in

Afghanistan and Iraq " to achieve an objective. "

 

For instance, early in the Iraq War, Bush authorized the bombing of a

residential Baghdad restaurant because of faulty intelligence that Saddam

Hussein might be having dinner there. The attack killed 14 civilians,

including seven children. One mother collapsed when her decapitated daughter

was pulled from the rubble.

 

Hundreds of other civilian deaths were equally horrific. Saad Abbas, 34,

was wounded in an American bombing raid, but his family sought to shield him

from the greater horror. The bombing had killed his three daughters - Marwa,

11; Tabarek, 8; and Safia, 5 - who had been the center of his life.

 

" It wasn't just ordinary love, " his wife said. " He was crazy about them.

It wasn't like other fathers. " [NYT, April 14, 2003]

 

The horror of the war was captured, too, in the fate of 12-year-old Ali

Ismaeel Abbas, who lost his two arms when a US missile struck his Baghdad

home. Ali's father, his pregnant mother and his siblings were all killed. As

he was evacuated to a Kuwaiti hospital, becoming a symbol of US compassion

for injured Iraqi civilians, Ali said he would rather die than live without

his hands.

 

For its part, the Bush administration has refused to tally the Iraqi

civilians killed in the war, a number now estimated in the tens of

thousands.

 

New Threats

 

At the Sept. 15 news conference, Bush also threatened to stop all

interrogation of terrorism suspects if his demands on the Geneva Conventions

weren't met.

 

" We can debate this issue all we want, but the practical matter is, if

our professionals don't have clear standards in the law, the program is not

going to go forward, " Bush said. " The bottom line is - and the American

people have got to understand this - that this program won't go forward; if

there is vague standards applied, like those in Common Article III from the

Geneva Convention, it's just not going to go forward. "

 

Common Article III doesn't prohibit interrogating prisoners, but it does

bar coercive tactics to elicit information. POWs are required to supply only

their name, rank and serial number or comparable information.

 

The United States played a prominent role in establishing these

standards, along with other rules of war. In addition, the US Constitution

bars cruel and unusual punishment and US law prohibits torture and other

degrading treatment of detainees, though Bush has stipulated that he does

not feel legally bound by those constraints.

 

Bush has argued that the " war on terror " is a new kind of war,

justifying these extraordinary tactics. But military historians say the

conflict is actually similar to many irregular wars fought over the

centuries, including the anti-colonial wars in the 1950s and 1960s and Latin

American " dirty wars " against leftist " terrorists " in the 1970s and 1980s.

 

In those conflicts, too, government security forces resorted to

extensive use of torture, " disappearances " and detentions without trial.

 

The " inner-directed " Bush now is charting a similar future for the

United States - and getting increasingly petulant with those Americans who

won't follow him.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the

Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of

the Bush Dynasty From Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at

secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999

book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

 

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