I Will Not Speak Kindly of the Dead. Bush Was Detestable.
Sanitizing George H.W. Bush's legacy amounts to historical revisionism.
Sanitizing George H.W. Bush's legacy amounts to historical revisionism.
Cynthia Johnson / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty Images
By Michael I. Niman, TruthoutPublished December 4, 2018
Were supposed to speak kindly of the dead. And were supposed to bury our
dead presidents with the type of fanfare and reverence that the colonial
forebearers of this nations white settlers reserved for royalty. Today, as
we prepare to bury the nations 41st president, George H.W. Bush, the
American press corps is carrying on this tradition, eulogizing him primarily
by celebrating his polite demeanor and his successful self-representation of
civility. Yes, the 41st president presented as a nicer person than the 45th,
or his son, the 43rd. But for the people whose countries or lives were
destroyed by his violent actions, hell always be a monster. Sanitizing his
story amounts to historical revisionism. Below are just eight of the many
reasons why, beneath the civility, George H.W. Bush was a detestable
president.
1. The Willie Horton Campaign Ad
Lets start with racism. The now infamous Willie Horton campaign ad
successfully deployed by team Bush in the 1988 campaign for president
featured images of Willie Horton, a Black man serving a life sentence for a
felony murder conviction who escaped from custody while on a weekend
furlough from prison, and went on to rape a white woman and brutally assault
her fiancé. The governor who signed the furlough was Bushs Democratic
opponent, Michael Dukakis. The sitting president, Ronald Reagan, signed
identical furlough requests. Most governors did as a routine matter. But the
Bush team made this furlough central to their campaign using blurry
high-contrast images of Horton that resembled wanted posters for runaway
slaves in the antebellum South.
The Willie Horton campaign ad blew a powerful dog whistle awaking white
racism and fear. The success of the ad spurred a generation of race-baiting
ads by Republican candidates that have picked at the nations festering
racism and undermined racial justice. Guided by Newt Gingrich, the new
racist campaigns used coded us vs. them language to provide a veneer of
plausible deniability to otherwise racist messages. A deniability that the
crude Bush campaign lacked. Longtime Republican operative Roger Stone, most
recently of Trump fame, at the time warned Bush and Republican National
Committee Chair Lee Atwater, Its a racist ad and Youre going to regret
it, explaining You and George Bush will wear that to your grave. Atwater,
before dying in 1991, apologized for the Willie Horton campaign ad. Bush
never did.
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2. The Invasion of Panama
Barely one year into his presidency in December of 1989, Bush invaded Panama
for the ostensible reason of executing an American arrest warrant against
that nations populist strongman and leader, Manuel Noriega. Noriega, for
his part, was a CIA asset during the period when Bush was CIA director prior
to becoming Ronald Reagans vice president. Noriega also served the US as an
asset during the Reagan-era Contra War against Nicaragua, when he was
photographed meeting with Bush. By 1989, however, Noriega was difficult to
handle. The invasion to arrest him cost the lives of as many as 3,000
Panamaniansand destroyed the working-class Panamanian neighborhood of
Chorrillo. The Bush administration named the war Operation Just Cause. The
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights this year ordered the US to pay
reparationsfor the war, though thats not going to happen anytime soon.
3. Targeting Civilians in Iraq
Bush launched the Gulf War, first as Operation Desert Shield in August 1990,
then intensified it as Desert Storm in January 1991. Ostensibly, the war was
to restore the Kuwaiti monarchy to power after that nation was invaded by
Iraq. Saddam Hussein, however, invaded Kuwait only after effectively
receiving the green light to do so from Bushs ambassador to Iraq, April
Glaspie. The war saw 88,500 tons of bombs fall on Iraq and Kuwait over the
course of 43 days, initially killing as many as 13,000 Iraqi civilians and
20,000 Iraqi troops, most of whom were killed by bombardment as they fled
Kuwait.
The bombs targeted essential Iraqi infrastructure, such as water and sewage
treatment facilities, food processing plants, agricultural facilities and
the nations electrical grid and transportation infrastructure. As many as
an additional 70,000 secondary Iraqi deaths resulted from this
infrastructural damage. The sanctions that followed Desert Storm caused the
premature deaths of as many as 500,000 Iraqis. Shiite and Kurdish rebels who
Bushs State Department encouraged to rise up in rebellion against the Iraqi
government of Saddam Hussein during Desert Storm were abandoned by the US
once Iraq fled Kuwait.
4. The Racist War on Drugs
Bush the warrior was on a roll during the first two years of his presidency,
also escalating the so-called War on Drugs. In 1989 he held a live televised
address from the White House holding up a bag of crack seized by police in
Washingtons Lafayette Park across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.
The bust later turned out to be a PR event orchestrated by agents who lured
a drug dealer into the park. Citing the high-profile arrest across from the
White House, Bush called for more prisons, more jails, more courts, more
prosecutors while maintaining the racist legal disparities that made Black
drug users 12 times as likely to go to jailas white drug users.
5. The October Surprise
As president, Bush used his office to obstruct justice and thwart
investigations into the criminal activity of the Reagan administration,
where he served as vice president. The October surprise refers to
allegations that representatives of the Reagan campaign conspired with
Iranian leaders prior to the 1980 presidential election. At the time,
Iranian students were holding 52 American hostages in Iran, to the
embarrassment of the administration of President Jimmy Carter. According to
the allegations, Reagan campaign representatives cut a deal with Iran to
hold the hostages until after the election, thus making Carter seem weak.
Witnesses placed Reagans campaign chief and subsequent CIA director,
William Casey, meeting with Iranian government representatives in Madrid
during the 1980 campaign. But Bush, as president, thwarted the
investigationby withholding important information regarding Caseys
whereabouts at the time he was supposedly in Madrid. Without this
corroborating evidence, the congressional task force investigating the
October surprise had to dismiss the allegations. In 2013, Lee Hamilton, who
chaired the investigation, admitted that it might have ended differently if
Bush didnt withhold evidence. Investigative reporter Robert Parry, who
passed away earlier this year, reported in 2013that archivists at the George
H.W. Bush library released documents to him revealing White House knowledge
of the incriminating trip. Historians are hoping that with Bushs death,
more records from this period will be declassified.
The hostages were held through the election and released on Reagans
inauguration day. If a deal was made to stall the release of the American
hostages, that would amount to treason, much like presidential candidate
Richard Nixons moves to stall President Lyndon Johnsons Vietnam peace deal
in order to affect the 1968 presidential election.
6. Iran-Contra Cover-Ups
What became known as the Iran-Contra Affair involved a complex chain of
interconnected activities where the Reagan administration sold missiles to
Iran while they were technically an enemy state hostile to the US. This was
supposedly payback for the aforementioned hostage deal. The dark money from
the missile sales was used to fund Contra terrorists (a.k.a. liberation
fighters) waging war against the democratically elected Sandinista
government in Nicaragua. This money was necessary after Congress cut off
funds to the Contras because of bad press about unsavory activities, such as
assassinating elected officials and bombing schools, clinics, busses and
electric stations.
Independent Counsel Lawrence Walshs subsequent investigation of the
Iran-Contra affair was obstructed by Bush, who, before leaving the White
House, issued pardons to six targets of the investigation, most notably the
former defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, who was about to go on trial.
According to Walsh, Bushs pardon of Weinberger, marked the first time a
president ever pardoned someone in whose trial he might have been called as
a witness, because the president was knowledgeable of factual events
underlying the case. Walsh, a Republican who previously served as United
States deputy attorney general under President Eisenhower, accused Bush of
misconduct in helping to cover up the Iran-Contra affair.
7. Indifference to AIDS
Bushs main crime here was an indifference to human life, which manifested
itself in inaction as the AIDS plague continued on unabated. More focused on
wars than on domestic affairs, Bushs priorities did not include funding any
meaningful action to stem the AIDS crisis either through research or
treatment. His ignorant stance on the disease, which when uttered as
president, contributed to false narratives, undermining any meaningful
response to the crisis. Focusing on gay men, he argued that the disease
vectors werebehavioral. At the same time, in other parts of the world,
poverty and not sexual orientation or intravenous drug use, were emerging as
vectors. When AIDS activists reactedto his comments, Bush responded that
You cant talk about it [AIDS] rationally.
8. Opening Guantánamo
Bush also gave us the notorious off shore limbo of the Guantánamo Bay
detentions. When Haitian refugees escaping the violence surrounding the 1991
coup in that country sought asylum in the US, Bush opened up a camp for them
at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. His purpose was similar to
that of his son, George Jr., in that he wanted a place to hold people
without allowing them on US soil under protection of US law. To Bush, the
Haitians posed a threat unlike any other refugee group or migrant
population.
Of course, none of these instances of cruel and detestable behavior
contradict the claims made in political obituaries about George H.W. Bushs
civil treatment of those whom he deemed worthy of civility. His treatment of
Presidents Clinton and Obama, for example, are hallmarks of political
civility. Amid the praise of that civility, however, we must not forget that
he was also a despicable person whose presidency set us on a course to
endless war, led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, established a model for
racist dog-whistle politics, undermined the humanity of AIDS sufferers,
covered up criminal activity at the highest levels of government and worked
to undermine not just government accountability, but also the rule of law.
Since Donald Trump took office, progressive journalism has been under
constan