By Stan Moore, Media Monitors Network
The Presidency of George W. Bush is without a doubt the most catastrophic presidency in the history of the American republic. The cost and the level of layers of cost are almost beyond accounting, but gradually we are realizing what a catastrophic presidency this one is and has been.
Even today, word is out that the Bush administration is suspected of playing politics with the numbers of American soldiers killed in Iraq, and only listing numbers of soldiers who actually died in battle as war dead, but not including those who died in hospitals or from war wounds after being shipped to Germany or even to the United States. Some are saying that the Bush deception is concealing an estimated 9000 deaths of American soldiers in the Bush War of Aggression in Iraq, a much higher cost than the 1800+ deaths the Bushites are publicly acknowledging.
After Bush is out of power, the American military will have to leave Iraq and will have to leave Afghanistan, and the proxy governments installed and vetted by American to prop up American interests will be removed by the native peoples. Their countrymen will either kill these puppet rulers or they will have to emigrate to the U.S. or elsewhere. Iraq and Afghanistan are already lost wars of aggression by the U.S. in its devil's bargain of blood for oil. It is just a matter of time before the Americans must withdraw, but the high price of lost American soldiers will certainly grow higher before the carnage is over.
But let no one believe that American soldiers will only pay the extremely high cost of Bushism. Obviously, dead Iraqis and Afghans greatly outnumber dead Americans. Grieving families from those nations will forever remember the high cost of Bushism.
The international diplomatic community will always grieve the high cost of Bushism, not in lives lost, but in opportunities lost, in diplomatic potential discarded needlessly, in hard feelings and estrangement from allies. Bushism is the untoward synergy of arrogance and ignorance, and it harms good will between men and nations and has forestalled productive problem-solving in the United Nations and elsewhere.
As terrible as Bushism has been for the outside world, the tragedies of Bushism will forever mostly harm America herself and her people. Working people will forever be harmed by the obscenely insane Bush-led increase in national debt. Bush has heavily engaged in class warfare, and the further transferal of wealth to the wealthiest elite, who have received almost unlimited tax advantages, wealth transfers, removal of business regulations and other stipends to their already excessive accumulations of wealth.
Bush has greatly harmed the people, greatly harmed the environment, greatly harmed democracy, greatly harmed the constitution, greatly harmed the prestige of the nation, and he smiles and smirks and acts as if he is proud of himself. Perhaps George W. Bush is truly insane. Perhaps he is dutifully preparing America for the "rapture". Perhaps Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice ARE the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. Nothing else even begins to make sense. Bushism has had an extremely high price for America and promises to leave America bankrupt, environmentally damaged, unsafe, and insecure.
Can it get any worse? Well, rumor is that Jeb Bush would love to complete the job his brother started. The American people are so complicit in their own demise that it would not be a major surprise to see Jeb Bush emerge as a major presidential candidate in 2008. The Bush Curse on America is far from over.
