Poor Choice to Comment on Afghan Withdrawal, Mr. Bush
Jack Brewster, Forbes: “Former President George W. Bush on Wednesday criticized President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, predicting it would lead to suffering for the Afghan people.”
Well now George, it would probably have been better to just leave that decision alone rather than to make a statement. First of all, it was your war, cooked up by Condi Rice and Colin Powell, with Donald Rumsfeld prepping a salad and Dick Cheney wearing the chef's apron.
How did a nice guy like you get tagged with two wars?
You are a nice guy, George. Everyone says so, including Michelle Obama and she’s known to be a hard sell. I liked you personally and we’d have no doubt enjoyed a ride into the setting-sun, down on your Texas ranch. But you weren’t a strong leader and your vice-president was (and is) a tough son-of-a-bitch. Cheney saw the profit in war and the opportunity to play both God and President when 9-11 struck. I dislike the man so intensely that I wrote a book about him.
And then there’s the War Crimes thing
In late May of 2015, Richard Clarke sat down with Amy Goodman of NPR. Clarke was a high-level intelligence official under the Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton and George Bush administrations and working for four consecutive presidencies speaks for his qualifications. He minced no words.
"I think things that they authorized probably fall within the area of war crimes. Whether that would be productive or not, I think, is a discussion we could all have. But we have established procedures now with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where people who take actions as serving presidents or prime ministers of countries have been indicted and have been tried. So the precedent is there to do that sort of thing. And I think we need to ask ourselves whether or not it would be useful to do that in the case of members of the Bush administration. It's clear that things that the Bush administration did — in my mind, at least, it's clear that some of the things they did were war crimes."
There was a court on the other side of the world that agreed
In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were... found guilty of war crimes. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in absentia in Malaysia...At the end of the week-long hearing, the five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered guilty verdicts against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their key legal advisors who were all convicted as war criminals for torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. Full transcripts of the charges, witness statements and other relevant material will now be sent to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council. The guilty verdict goes on to describe in detail the torture by U.S. agencies that occurred at abu Graib and Guantanamo, but we know those details from cringeworthy reports that came out in the world press.
The Biden pullout cleans up a mess three administrations failed to solve
“I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome,” Biden said as he announced the U.S. would formally end its mission in Afghanistan on August 31.
So George, there are presidents who lead and those who listen to bad advice and follow. I still think you are an agreeable guy, but then I haven’t had my fingernails pulled out with pliers or been strapped to a waterboard. You probably ought to lie low on this one and not take any follow-up speaking opportunities, at least on this subject. Best to continue cranking out the paintings. People seem to like them.
Image Credit: MLive.com