Fog Of History, Jamie O, Political Crack, War in Iraq

Some People Should Shut Up

George W. Bush discovers a door is locked, a highlight of his presidency.

This wandered into my Electric TwitterX Machine feed this morning. Given it was from Mr. Axios, I was not surprised.

Axios often tries to outdo the New York Times and Politico for most the tone-deaf DC coverage, but this is a whopper. This is asking Donald Trump for his thoughts on anger management.

“Warns of temptation to seek peace” is something else coming from that guy. I think it speaks to a larger issue with how we rehabilitated someone who was a top-five worst president of all time. Oh, look, he’s painting! Hey, isn’t that nice, he gave Michelle Obama a breath mint! And perhaps my favorite, he was a decent president compared to Trump.

A piece of shit is actually better than a pile of shit by some metrics, but it’s still a piece of shit. And that man’s presidency was quite the Washingon Monument-sized turd. I sort of wondered if eventually Dubya’s failures would be lost to time and people would think of him as a better president than he was, and at least in the DC media world, he is being viewed that way. Perhaps a better way to view his presidency is as a step in the direction a political party took in its own devolution that gave us Donald Trump.

Under his watch, America became a country that tortures. The reason for the war, Iraq had WMDs, was sold to us constantly and ended up being a major stain on Colin Powell’s legacy when it turned out it was false. If you read Richard Clarke’s outstanding book “Against All Enemies,” you know that the post-war planning for Iraq was a toxic mix of xenophobia, neo-conservative fever dreams, nepotism, and arrogance.

In the article, Axios does not mention Iraq once. They “acquired” the video of Bush making this statement which makes me wonder if this was leaked to them with some sort of a deal not to mention Iraq. But you cannot write about anything that this man says about the current conflict without mentioning his own foreign policy failures (they are many and they are great). It is a very important context.

We know what your thoughts are on these kinds of conflicts, George. We know they are not good, we know that your ideas, or the ideas of the people feeding them to you, did not work out. Anytime this man says anything anywhere about what is happening in Israel and Gaza, the media must put it into context via the lens that he himself created: The failed war in Iraq. Axios should know better, but often they demonstrate either that they do not know better or are just looking for clicks.

The last word goes to Green Day.

2 thoughts on “Some People Should Shut Up”

  1. Pingback: Mike’s Blog Round-Up ... from Crooks & Liars driftglass - Tom Bettenhausen's

  2. He was and still is a moron. I could not believe that some people in the media thought that Shrub (Molly Ivins)was such a transformed person after he was a shitty president. And yes now he paints!

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