Yes, I know I'm posting this incredibly late, way after the fact (and all the rest)...and no, I'm not claiming that a very busy fortnight house-sitting (moreover, pretty well out of the blue) plus accompanying dreadful sleeps especially both pre-and post- this are a perfect, unassailable excuse or the like. And no, I'm not herein referring to (President) 'George Dubya', the ever-misunderestimated and *unduly-criticized son of the 41st President, and so, yes, I am referring here to President HW Bush Senior...
...whose death at the ripe old age of 94 made world headlines (for quite awhile) recently - coincidentally on the very heels of - more precisely, a few hours after - my having made mention of him - or moreover whether himself or President Jimmy Carter would be next to 'kick the bucket' (though I can assure readers it was not described in those terms)...but, I believe - to my brother - simply in terms of the apparent longevity of other recent former United States presidents (though Richard Milhous Nixon of Watergate infamy survived to just 81, Gerald Ford departed this life at the good 'ole age of 93, as did Ronald Reagan only two years earlier). Whew! Enough said already!
Since folk generally, including and especially 'the [mainstream] media', seem to have no qualms whatsoever whenever referring to the likes of say, a **Saddam Hussein, a Shah of Iran or an Ayatollah Khomeini in less than flattering or endearing terms however deceased they may well now happen to be, I'd simply suggest including such as President Bush Senior among these ill-famed 'Unworthies' is not altogether either unduly unfair nor all that implausible.
And my essential reasons, my raison d'etre for including, for thus classifying and categorizing the 41st President in such a way...of daring to contradict the received wisdom of our age which makes out that Bush Senior was some sort of latter-day mini-Messiah for (somewhat) presiding over the admittedly highly historic, even epochal breakup of the Communist Bloc and dissolution of the Soviet Empire...as the chief of his alleged accomplishments (among other things)...
...is - in brief - as follows:
Vis-a-vis President George Herbert Walker Bush's involvement in the First U.S.-Iraq ('Gulf') War... : Known as Operation Desert Storm and presided over by General ('Stormin') Norman Schwarzkopf, the (***airborne, as opposed to ground-based section of the) battle to retake Kuwait from Iraq gained Bush Senior major respect or at least due deference abroad and extensive kudos at home, even elevating his popular support (previously on the major decline through a sluggish American economy and recession) to near historic levels, if I remember rightly into the low nineties...
Unfortunately (to be euphemistic), or more pertinently tragically - for those involved 'on the ground' in Iraq (and in the desert between there and Kuwait) - around 200,000 surrendering Iraqi soldiers were apparently massacred by United States marines (unbeknownst to the general, TV-viewing global public), and the longsuffering Kurds in the northern quadrant of Iraq were pretty well left as sheep for the slaughter by President Bush himself...who handily and adroitly employed a cunning and 'brilliant' piece of ****technicalese to wheedle his way out of prior solemn commitments to those selfsame people that yes, the U S of A, would readily come to their defence...and save them from the subsequent nerve/chemical gas 'onslaught' waged upon their innocent civilian population by President Saddam Hussein.
How, having been given pretty well carte blanche by the United Nations...in an unprecedented near-unanimous support for the otherwise unilateral American action in rescuing Kuwait from Iraqi clutches...Bush & Co later on managed to attempt to justify effectively leaving these various Iraqis (surrendering soldiers and innocent civilians) in the lurch...however fancy a ****technical, hifalutin' an argument (as was then published in Time magazine, I believe)...is quite frankly the kinda stuff that would've made *****Machiavelli proud.
Come back, Dubya...all is forgiven. But, more seriously, if my Bible has any sort of meaning at all - and I certainly believe it does - then any wistful assumption that President George W Bush might well have (as he indeed enunciated at his Dad's funeral) of President George (HW) Bush's 'looking down from heaven (thereupon)', quite apart from being essentially thoroughly unbiblical...is moreover, I'd respectfully suggest, Scripturally unwarranted...as unrepentant evildoers, liars and murderers - according to every version I've ever managed to get ahold of, anyhow - all ultimately meet their just (and yes, exceedingly sad) fate...not upon those blissful shores...but in the Lake of Fire...
*No, I'm far from a supporter of the Iraq War - indeed Bush Junior's 'actions' there opened a veritable Pandora's Box - a hornet's nest of trouble - which has subsequently miserably afflicted our planet. I just have some sympathy for/with a son seeking to dutifully fulfil what he misguidedly perceived as his father's unfulfilled mission...and certainly in terms of the three major critiques I cite herein the epitaph 'Mission Accomplished' could hardly have been attached to President Bush Senior's Iraqi involvement. No, not by a long shot.
**Whom I include as opposed to such notorious folk as Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao-Tse Tung or Adolf Hitler...simply to be rather circumspect (as far as possible) in my contrasts and comparisons.
***Having watched - glued to my/our seats - this first ever '24/7' TV-style war on our tellies (while over in Oz, following a terrific thunder crash in Brisbane) in late 1990/early 1991.
****Admittedly my memory is at times somewhat challenged (as one sibling would readily agree!), though to the best of my recollection Bush Senior wrote an elaborate raison d'etre post-Desert Storm as to why the targeted assassination of various (however bad) world leaders was illegitimate or unlawful...and yet somehow-or-other the selfsame person can simultaneously justify (at least in his own mind) the apparent massacring of those aforementioned (200,000 - though the exact number matters not) Iraqi soldiers. Perhaps the term 'cognitive dissonance', sheer inconsistency or moral hypocrisy covers the natural dilemma one looking objectively at such a scenario might have thereabouts... . And though I've perhaps conflated Bush's solemn undertaking to the Kurds with his elaborate defence of not taking out Saddam Hussein...to ye average Iraqi I'd imagine the feeling was the same: yet another powerful politician who promises the world and delivers a damp squib...
...a forgivable matter in many another circumstance perhaps, but when the lives of (in both major above instances, innumerable) innocents (whether Kurdish civilians or effectively post-combatant Iraqi troops) is concerned, well...you form your own conclusions...
*****My ever trusty Chambers Concise Dictionary (Cambridge, 1988), is, as ever, very much on the mark, both with 'Machiavellian':'adj. destitute of political morality, ruled by expediency only: crafty, perfidious in conduct, activity'...and, more especially, 'perfidious':'adj. faithless: unfaithful: basely violating faith(******bold lettering all mine)'.
******For the Iraqi Kurdish population had every reason to expect the then American President to honour his pledged word...which he didn't...and thus his son felt it his own duty to pick up the pieces where his dad left off...and we all well know where that eventually ended up, don't we...
*******Due acknowledgment to John Pilger for his courageous investigative journalism giving the expose on the fate of surrendering Iraqi soldiers...the full dossier, so to speak...in Distant Voices.
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