Progressive Vision Failure: The Real Scandal of Bush’s Knesset Speech
Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque
May 18, 2008
There has been much throwing about of brains in the "progressosphere"
about George W. Bush's
shocking and unseemly injection of – gasp! – partisan****p into his address
to the Israeli
Knesset the other day. Evidently this was the first time in American
history that a president
has ever indulged in such un-statesmanlike behavior while gadding about in
foreign parts. And
what exactly did Bush do, what was this act of unprecedented moral and
political depravity?
Brace yourself: he made a remark that could be construed as an implied
criticism of Barack Obama.
Now, it so happens that there was indeed a very grave and sinister scandal
in Bush's appearance
before the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding. But it
had nothing to do with
his witless ejaculation of that clapped-out right-wing trope of yore: the
"Neville Chamberlain
gambit," in which anyone who fails to evince sufficient eagerness to
immediately obliterate
Wa****ngton's designated enemy of the day is accused of "appeasement,"
paving the way for the
next Hitler, etc. No; the real scandal lies elsewhere. But the fact that
it was universally
ignored, in favor of starchy outrage over the non-issue of Bush's remark,
tells us a great deal
about the clueless – and gutless – nature of so much of what p***** for
political dissent in
America today.
(Continued after the jump.)
I.
We will get to the genuine outrage shortly, but first let's cut through
some of the starch. The
reaction of Will Bunch, who writes the Attywood blog for the Philadelphia
Daily News, is a good
example of the overwrought reaction that greeted Bush's typically bug-eyed
reading of the words
that someone put on the autocue for him. This is the offending passage,
which Bunch took from
this CNN story:
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as
if some ingenious
argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," said Bush, in
what White House
aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other
Democrats for the U.S.
president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to the
Israeli Knesset. "As
Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared:
'Lord, if only I could
have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an
obligation to call this
what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly
discredited by history."
That's it. A tired, ludicrous, irrelevant and meaningless analogy, from
the most unpopular
president in American history – a despised, pathetic wretch whose words
sway no one beyond a
fanatic minority of zealots – and a cynical, profit-seeking elite --
already committed to his
murderous vision. The speech will have no impact whatsoever on the outcome
of the presidential
race. It tells us nothing that we don't already know about the Bush gang's
lust for war with
Iran, a nation the gang has long painted in the colors of Nazi Germany.
But because this pointless regurgitation contained a dig at the likely
Democratic nominee,
Bunch calls it an act of "political treason." In fact, in a truly
remarkable – and to me
genuinely shocking – outburst, he says that Bush's tweaking of Obama in
the speech was actually
worse than the Watergate scandal, the Iran-Contra scandal, and all of the
Bush Regime's own
depredations in the past seven years, including the "flagrant disregard
for the Constitution,
the launching of a 'pre-emptive' war on false pretenses, and discussions
about torture and
other shocking abuses inside the White House inner sanctum." All of this
-- crime, deceit, mass
murder in a war of aggression -- pales in comparison to Bush's Knesset
speech, which Bunch
calls "a new low that I never imagined was even possible."
I don't want to pick on Bunch. He seems like a nice guy, and he has worked
hard over the years
in detailing some of the outrages of the Bush Regime. But I must confess
that I simply cannot
comprehend the mindset that would lead to such a statement. Bush goading
Obama in an overseas
appearance is a "new low"? Worse than torture? Worse than unrestricted
spying on the American
people? Worse than the subversion of the electoral process in Watergate
(not to mention the
2000 and 2004 campaigns)? Worse than running guns to the Iranian mullahs
to help fund a
terrorist insurgency in Nicaragua? Worse than aggressive war launched on
false pretenses? Worse
than a million people dead and more than four million driven from their
homes? What kind of
moral algebra could lead to such a conclusion? How could anything that
Bush says at this point
be worse than what he has already done?
Part of it stems, I think, from the deeply ingrained and deeply
self-righteous "American
exceptionalism" that characterizes most "progressive" viewpoints. What we
have here, first, is
the tem****ary insanity that afflicts almost all partisans during an
election year, in which the
slightest perturbation on the American political scene far outweighs any
other event in moral
im****tance. Second, there is the upsurge of patriotic bunkum that arises
during presidential
campaigns, where partisan****p so often wraps itself in the robes of a
violated idealism.
Witness the quivering sanctimony of Bunch's indignation (and try not to
let the humming chorus
of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" – from, say, the soundtrack of
"Doctor Strangelove" –
drown out the prose as you read):
As a believer in free speech, I think Bush has a right to say what he
wants, but as a President
of the United States who swore to uphold the Constitution, his freedom
also carries an awesome
and solemn responsibility, and what this president said today is a serious
breach of that high
moral standard.
Of course, there are differences of opinion on how America should handle
Iran, and that's why
we're having an election here at home, to sort these issues out --
hopefully with respect and
not with emotional and inaccurate appeals….[Here Bunch accurately
describes the hypocrisy of
Bush's remarks in respect to other American dealings with Libya and,
indeed, Iran. Then the
bunkum kicks into overdrive.]
But what Bush did in Israel this morning goes well beyond the accepted
confines of American
political debate. When the president speaks to a foreign parliament on
behalf of our country,
his message needs to be clear and unambiguous. Our democracy may look
messy to outsiders, and
we may have our disagreements with some sharp elbows thrown around, but at
the end of the day
we are not Republicans or Democrats or liberals or conservatives.
We are Americans.
O, e pluribus unum! Let the mighty eagle soar! Yeah, we may mix it up a
little bit, but at the
end of the day we are all one, we are all….family.
One can only assume that Bunch has not been reading his own admirable
pieces for the past
several years. Or anything else for that matter. Throughout this entire
decade, the public
"debate" has been packed to the rafters with fierce excommunications of
Bush regime critics as
"un-American," not "real Americans," not "one of us," "traitors,"
"enemies" and so on and so
forth. (My own in-box has groaned with such messages for years. Indeed, if
I had a dollar for
every time I've been told by a fellow American that I am not their fellow
American, I could
probably run for president myself. At least for a week or two. I imagine
that Bunch, writing
for a much larger public platform, has gotten even more of this kind of
hysterical shunning.)
Yet still the bunkum goes on:
And you, Mr. Bush, are the leader of us all. To use a diplomatic setting
on foreign soil to
score a cheap political point at home is way beneath your office, way
beneath your country, and
way beneath the people you serve. You have been handed an office once
uplifted to great heights
by fellow countrymen from Wa****ngton to Lincoln to Roosevelt to
Eisenhower, and have plunged it
so deeply into the Karl-Rove- and-Rush-Limbaugh-fueled world of political
destruction and
survival of all costs that [you] have lost all perspective -- and all
sense of decency. To
travel to Israel and to associate a sitting American senator and your
possible successor in the
Oval Office with those who at one time gave comfort to an enemy of the
United States is, in and
of itself, an act of political treason.
"You, Mr. Bush, are the leader of us all." I can't say for sure, of
course, but I would bet
good money that not once in the last five years (if not longer) has Will
Bunch ever felt in his
heart, even for a nano-second, that Bush is "the leader of us all." I
would imagine that Bunch,
like any sentient being, has long considered Bush to be a willfully
ignorant preppy thug who
cheated his way into office, where he has gleefully spit and shat upon the
Constitution, the
rule of law and all human decency. And I know for a fact – from the very
post examined here –
that Bunch considers Bush a war criminal who launched an act of aggression
on false pretenses.
So why does Bunch – and the other progressives shocked at Bush's speech –
engage in false
pretenses of their own? Why pretend that this bloodstained husk is some
kind of legitimate
figure, and be outraged when he fails to respect the niceties of some
idealized vision of
American politics, or lowers the "dignity of his office"?
And why engage in the same kind of historical ignorance that Bush's
statement reeks of? Bunch
says that Bush compared Obama to "those who at one time gave comfort to an
enemy of the United
States." Presumably, he is referring to Neville Chamberlain and others who
negotiated with
Hitler before the war. But Hitler was not "an enemy of the United States"
until he declared war
on America in December 1941, in fulfillment of his military pact with
Japan. Thus anyone who
held talks with Hitler prior to December 1941 was not "giving comfort to
an enemy of the United
States." Yes, I know Bunch is trying to turn Bush's own words against him,
to say, "you call
Obama an appeaser, but you are committing treason yourself!" But
"appeasement," though it might
be foolish or ineffectual in particular cir***stances, is not treason. Nor
did Bush claim it
was. And for God's sake, criticizing a political opponent – even in the
hallowed precincts of a
foreign legislature – is not treason in any sense, not even
metaphorically.
And speaking of historical ignorance, should we now take up the vast field
of crime, folly, and
"political destruction and survival at all costs" that has historically
characterized the
"dignity of the office" of president, which Bush has supposedly lowered?
No; life is too short.
Let's leave that fascinating topic aside for now and move on.
II.
As we said, at the core of the mindset represented by Bunch's post is a
fierce partisan****p
disguised as idealism. To test this, let's perform a brief thought
experiment. Imagine that
Barack Obama, not George Bush, is president of the United States. Imagine
that President Obama
went to Israel and spoke to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of the
nation's founding.
Imagine that upon that solemn occasion, President Obama spoke on this
wise:
"Some seem to believe that violence, or the ever-present threat of
violence, should always be
at the forefront of our dealings with those nations with whom we have
serious disagreements --
as if pointing a gun at someone's head is the best way to win hearts and
minds," said Obama, in
what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by
presidential
candidate John McCain and other Republicans for military action against
Iran.
"But I believe we should follow the insights of that great statesman and
military leader,
Winston Churchill, who said: 'Jaw-jaw is always better than war-war.' We
have an obligation to
pursue every possible avenue for peaceful resolution – and pursue them in
good faith, with
genuine commitment and unstinting effort – before we ever consider drawing
the terrible sword
of war. History teaches us the monstrous consequences of making violence a
key instrument of
national policy. We need only look at the unspeakable evils unleashed by
Nazi Germany, or the
agony today in Iraq, to see the cruel folly of opposing Churchill's
abiding wisdom on this point."
What would Will Bunch and the progressosphere have said to such a speech?
Would they have
condemned Obama for "political treason," for lowering the dignity of his
office by launching a
"cheap" partisan dig at a domestic political opponent during a speech
abroad? Would they
shuddered with revulsion at his invocation of Nazi Germany for political
purposes – in the
Israeli parliament, of all places?
No, of course not. They would have praised his bold stance against the
warmongers back home –
and the warmongers in Israel. They would have hailed his subtle dig at
McCain: "another
brilliant example of the artful blending of political pragmatism and
genuine idealism that has
been a hallmark of Obama's presidency." They would have applauded his
reference to World War
II: "I doubt if a single member of the Knesset was left unmoved when Obama
evoked the
'unspeakable evils' of Nazi Germany. I know there were tears in my eyes as
I watched that
****tion of the speech on YouTube. That's precisely the kind of deep,
learned historical
perspective – tempered always with the human touch, the empathy toward
others – that has made
this president so unique." In short, they would have lauded such a speech,
if the content and
speaker had been different. It is certainly not the non-existent principle
of non-partisan
presidential decorum in foreign appearances that has so vexed them in this
case.
Every time a president speaks on foreign soil – every single time, in
every administration –
there is a domestic political angle somewhere in the mix. Every time a
president goes abroad
and praises his own policies or viewpoints, he is attacking his domestic
critics, either
directly or by implication. There is nothing unusual or heinous about the
practice; it is
inevitable, and unavoidable, if a president says anything more than "Happy
to be here" on a
foreign visit. Even in the most idealized world of ever-dignified
presidents representing a
unified people who always put aside their sharp elbows and come together
in the end, Bush's
flaccid rhetoric at the Knesset would not represent a scandal or outrage
of any kind.
III.
But the progressive hissy fit over Bush's speech has provided a massive
distraction from the
real scandal of his appearance before the Knesset, and his reference to
Nazi Germany: the fact
that this mass-murdering wager of aggressive war would not have been
standing before the
Knesset at all – if not for his own family’s extensive, and profitable,
role in the rise of the
Nazi war machine. A role which continued not only after "Nazi tanks
crossed into Poland" (where
Bush family investments helped finance the concentration camp at
Auschwitz) but even after Nazi
forces were killing American troops in North Africa.
As Toby Rogers noted in his landmark 2002 piece for Clamor magazine, "Heir
to the Holocaust,"
which pulled together the vast amount of do***entary evidence of the
Bush-Walker clan’s
intimate and instrumental connection to the Nazis:
According to classified do***ents from Dutch intelligence and US
government archives, President
George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush made considerable profits off
Auschwitz slave
labor. In fact, President Bush himself is an heir to these profits from
the holocaust which
were placed in a blind trust in 1980 by his father, former president
George Herbert Walker Bush.
Throughout the Bush family's decades of public life, the American press
has gone out of its way
to overlook one historical fact – that through Union Banking Cor****ation
(UBC), Prescott Bush,
and his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, along with [their business
partner] German
industrialist Fritz Thyssen, financed Adolf Hitler before and during World
War II.
Rogers’ article – and other pieces such as the stories published in 2003
by John Buchanan in
the New Hamp****re Gazette -- provide the devastating details of this sorry
history, including
the seizure of some of the Bush family’s Nazi assets under the Trading
With the Enemy Act in
1942 – and their subsequent pulling of elitist strings to keep these
genuinely treasonous
dealings out of the public eye….and even profit from them after the war,
when the family and
its partners were allowed to liquidate their share of the seized foreign
assets:
Prescott Bush received $1.5 million for his share in UBC. That money
enabled Bush to help his
son, George Herbert Walker Bush, to set up his first royalty firm, Overby
Development Company,
that same year. It was also helpful when Prescott Bush left the business
world to enter the
public arena in 1952 with a successful senatorial campaign in Connecticut.
On October 8th,
1972, Prescott Bush died of cancer and his will was enacted soon after.
In 1980, when George H.W. Bush was elected vice president, he placed his
father's family
inherence in a blind trust. The trust was managed by his old friend and
quail hunting partner,
William "Stamps" Farish III. Bush's choice of Farish to manage the family
wealth is quite
revealing in that it demonstrates that the former president might know
exactly where some of
his inheritance originated. Farish's grandfather, William Farish Jr., on
March 25th, 1942,
pleaded "no contest" to conspiring with Nazi Germany while president of
Standard Oil in New
Jersey. He was described by Senator Harry Truman in public of approaching
"treason" for
profiting off the Nazi war machine. Standard Oil, invested millions in IG
Farben, who opened a
gasoline factory within Auschwitz in 1940.
Farish had signed a deal with the Nazis on secret patents for synthesizing
rubber. Hitler
couldn't have gone to war without it. Even after America entered the war,
Farish stood by his
Nazi partners and refused to share these precious trade secrets with the
U.S. government,
despite the American military's dire need for rubber.
None of this means that Bush’s grandfather was a Nazi. This is simply the
way the American
elite have always functioned. Ideology, morality, patriotism, law – all
must give way to the
relentless and ruthless pursuit of wealth, and the power and privilege and
dominance wealth
brings. Prescott Bush traded with the Nazis, even when they were killing
Americans, because
there was money in it. For the same reason, his son, Prescott Jr., has
long been a leading
figure in trading with the repressive communist regime in China (as have
Dubya's brother Neil
-- and Don Rumsfeld too, for that matter.). For the same reason, Prescott
Senior's other son,
George Herbert Walker Bush, and his son, George Walker Bush, have long had
extensive and
intimate business ties with the violent religious extremists in Saudi
Arabia, and with a number
of other tyrants throughout the Middle East and around the world.
It seems astoni****ng that in a media culture in which the slightest
youthful peccadillo and
most remote family history of a presidential candidate or office-holder
are exhumed and
examined in microscopic detail, the Bush family’s do***ented and
indisputable involvement in
the rise of Hitler and his machine of aggressive war has never come to the
attention of the
general public. But because such truths expose the reality of the elites
who control the
commanding heights of American society – and give the bitter lie to bubbly
effusions of
American exceptionalism, to pious, comforting fantasies about unifying
leaders of us all
carrying out their awesome and solemn responsibilities with unshakeable
dignity – they remain
forever outside the purview of "serious" discourse. Anything that
genuinely challenges the
prevailing pieties that mask the murderous operations of empire and
oligarchy must be ignored,
or mocked, scorned and marginalized (as we have seen in the controversy
over Obama’s pastor,
Jeremiah Wright). If in those very rare instances when the challenge is
too powerful to be
ignored or trivialized, then it must be physically destroyed, as in the
case of Martin Luther
King Jr. -- or even George Wallace, who presented a dangerous challenge to
elite rule from the
right (threatening the race-based "Southern strategy" of the Nixon
campaign) and was eliminated
from the national scene by the assassination attempt in 1972 which left
him crippled.
The only scandal attendant on Bush’s speech last week was the fact that
this unrepentant
beneficiary of Nazi blood money – who has himself aped the Nazis in his
own policies of
aggressive war, state terror and lawless authoritarianism -- was allowed
to stand before a
foreign legislature and prate about freedom and liberty and "fighting
evil." And this is just
part of a larger scandal: that he has been allowed to walk free among
decent people without
facing the slightest threat of justice for his crime, enjoying what is
perhaps the chief
privilege of his class – the immunity from all consequences of his
malevolent actions.
But to the progressosphere, Bush’s little indirect dig at Obama was far
more scandalous than
any of this; indeed, it was a "new low" in our national life. Of such
tunnel-visioned
self-delusion is our "progressive movement" made. Afraid to speak the
truth, or unable to see
it when it is in front of their eyes: no wonder the "progressives" have
been unable to stop the
Regime’s monstrous crimes, or rally public sup****t for impeachment, or
turn the tide of
national policy away from empire, dominion and injustice – a destructive
tide that Obama,
Clinton and McCain are happy to keep riding to their own positions of
power, wealth and privilege.
Link: www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1513/135/
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com
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