Bush and His Legacy of Horror

Eight years of government of George W. Bush, who will pass into the universal history of infamy, are about to end.

His extensive handbook of abuses includes the genocide against the Iraqi people, the violation of human rights and of international law, the use of lies to invade a sovereign nation, the torture of prisoners of war, the lack of respect of self-determination and the use of chemical weapons.

Bush, who was not less than the actions of his father, inscribes himself among the United States rulers that took very much to heart the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, according to which this country was chosen by Providence to expand and bring “democracy” to other parts of the world. Bush believed himself to be a redeemer, a sort of messianic envoy, who could decide who was a terrorist, who was the Axis of Evil, and everything, of course, because he had to have oil in Iraq, and because, due to his mental limitations, he knew, as Peter Ustinov said, that “war is the terrorism of the rich.”

We all know – including a good part of the North American people, so ignorant in the facts of the foreign policy of the empire – the lies contrived by Bush and his neoconservative hawks to invade Iraq; how he evaded international law; how he converted his former ally, Saddam Hussein, into a sort of demon- who nonetheless wasn’t so great- to justify the barbarity that his imperial army committed there.

Under the pretext of exporting “democracy” and “freedom” to Iraq, Bush’s government committed all sorts of outrages. More than a million deaths is sufficient proof of ignominy. The authentic weapons of mass destruction were used by Bush’s government to wipe out a nation. How can one forget, for example, the massacre in Falluja with white phosphorous, that evokes the horrors of the napalm that the United States dropped on Vietnam. With this substance, prohibited by international law, they assassinated thousands of civilians. Thanks to Italian television, the world learned of the horrifying slaughter of the inhabitants of the Iraqi city by the Yankee troops. How can one forget the tortures in the prison of Abu Ghraib, that Fernando Botero painted as a witness of the atrocity.

How can one forget the tortures in Guantanamo and the shameless words of Bush who said that “we don’t torture.” At the same time, he was opposed to the amendment that prohibited “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment of prisoners of the self-proclaimed “war on terror.” Ah, do we remember that the Vice-President Dick Cheney asked that, at the least, they exclude the CIA from this prohibition?

How to not evoke, now, Cindy Sheehan, mother of a soldier who died during a resistance action in Baghdad, who was many days before the ranch of the president in Texas, yelling that Bush assassinated her son. If he believes that the invasion in Iraq was a just cause – asked the afflicted woman – why didn’t he send his twin daughters to replace some soldiers?

Bush, whom one Iraqi journalist said goodbye to with shoes, counts on the antipathy of people of the world and ends his government of expansion with his internal popularity at rock bottom. Hope is still held that one day he will be judged for crimes of war, that history will remember him as a barbarian, a liar and a vulgar cowboy with bad hands. The same destiny is waiting for his clan of wrongdoers.

The arrogant Bush, who leaves the empire plunged into profound crisis, in his farewell to a tyranny in decay, must already know that “one can deceive all the people for a time, part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time.” May the ghosts of the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan follow him always.