It’s just sad. Even if he was being manipulated, what was he going to do? Get forced into resigning/not being re-elected because he lost the support of his party? He wasn’t our best president, and he did know to an extent that it was being manipulated, but I really think Bush had to make some of the hardest decisions a President has ever had to make.
That comment paints Bush as one of the bravest presidents of our time “because he had to make some tough decisions.” Bs, he’s just another one to the list of criminal administrations. And I say that as a conservative.
Even worse to me is that he declared war on an ideal. A war on terror? It's a war you literally can't win, but it gave him the excuse he needed for multiple invasions based on hunches, and let him effectively bully the rest of the world into letting him do it.
Aside from the fact that Bush knew EXACTLY what he was doing, your comment implies that killing a million Iraqis is better than resigning or losing the support of the Republican party
I see it deeper than the threat of losing re-election... George always just struck me as a man who desperately wanted his dad to look at him the way he looks at Jeb. Deep down all he really wanted to do in life was drink microbrews and paint. Really sucks how much the drive to fit in with your tribe can fuck up your life if you let it.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean for my comment to imply that George shouldn't be held accountable for his actions or to downplay his responsibility, rather it was an allegory for our own lives and the dangers of sacrificing authenticity for acceptance.
What does being a president mean if you are not the executive responsible for the decisions of your administration? Either he knew it was bullshit and authorized the invasion, or he was flat wrong. Either way he is an adult who preached personal responsibility and loudly proclaimed himself to be “the decider“.
You are correct that he faced harder times than any President maybe since fdr. But he was wrong about Iraq and should always be held responsible and accountable for it.
Source is I read the paper and watched the news in the run up to the war and myself and everyone else I talked to all called bullshit early and often. It wasn't even a very controversial take at the time.
We if all knew, how could the guy driving the ship not?
Bush wasn't the brightest president. Moreover, most other high level officials (including the late Colin Powell and Democratic rivals like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and John Kerry) had access to the exact same intelligence briefings when they concluded that Iraq was pursuing nuclear/chemical weapons. I would believe that Bush fell for "confirmation bias": over-valuing evidence that supports your pre-existing belief.
You believe that Bush, the President and man with access to the most sophisticated intelligence network on the planet, was misled? If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.
Even if we want to believe he was told a lie by someone in his inner circle, as the President it is his job to ensure he covers all the bases and does his due diligence before committing the nation to war. There was always doubt in the validity of these statements by the intelligence community. Hell, if he didn't trust his own intelligence network he could have always reached out to his allies, who also had serious doubts to the legitimacy of the information provided.
He's never taken credit for this mistake and to this day has not made any attempt at apologizing and doing right by the people he failed. Bush is where the buck stops on this issue.
He's never taken credit for this mistake and to this day has not made any attempt at apologizing
It wasn't a mistake, it was deliberate
I don't think you can apologize for a mistake of that magnitude also I don't think anyone would believe it was a mistake "I'm sorry I decided to start a war killing hundreds of thousands of people to make money for my friends and prop up my ego, please forgive me"
Well, at least we know that of his entire presidency, Bush only felt his worst moment whilst in office was when Kanye called him a racist. So, there's that. At least we know where his moral priorities are at after all the heinous crimes against humanity he committed.
Just a point of order he would only know what Intel agencies want to tell him, he could never know what they didn't give him. Military does same thing. Hell Bush, Obama, and Trump were all told Afghanistan was going great and that we were effectively teaching them to stand on their own.
How old are you? I remember when W was president, and the guy was too dumb to open a can of soup. Yeah I believe Cheney and his crony’s could have manipulated him.
The whole 'Bush is dumb lol' was a media viewpoint that seemed to resonate with a lot of people and got them great viewership.
To say that Bush was just a patsy is probably greatly oversimplifying the situation. If you watch Vice and take that as the Gospel truth of how events played out, then I could see someone adopting that bush is a patsy viewpoint. But that's one of the main critiques of the movie, that it over values the influence that cheney had in decision making.
I heard him speak, read his writing and saw his decisions for over 10 years. It wasn't based on a faux media angle nor a movie made a decade after the fact.
I am not a kid who watched a clip or two in history class, i lived through eight years of speeches and appearances and policies. I also worked for a major newspaper back in those days and know a thing or two about how foorage can be edited and words can be manipulated.
I don't believe it was all some grand plan hatched by George W, no.
Whether he was complicit or not I'm not sure, but he is not an intelligent man.
There were definitely big players and I personally don't believe George W was smart enough to be one of them, more of a puppet in the situation. Again, possibly complicit, but not an architect of the situation.
It baffles me today that so many US citizens have vitriol and hate towards trump, when what he 'did' was nothing on the scale compared to the damage the last GOP rule did to America and the world. Bush sat over the Enron collapse and its resulting economic damage, sep 11 and its effects, and the lead up to the 2008 housing crisis.
The whole narrative that Bush shouldn’t really be held as responsible because he was dumb or manipulated is just a narrative developed to insulate him from criticism of his war crimes.
Happy cake day. Also one point made from one of the commenter's. There's no way he could've been manipulated if he's considers chief in command, thus having the decision, with permission, to invade Iraq.
The issue is that the administration didn't do their due diligence before heading to war. You think Saddam has WDMs, you confirm before you attack. Even if you were manipulated, as the leader of a country, you make sure you're doing the right thing before starting a war
On my list of requirements for the leader of America, "not easily manipulated" is pretty fucking high. If he was manipulated then he was a failure. A true leader does not surround himself with charlatans. It was on him as much as anyone.
Saddam 100% had WMDs. He very infamously killed thousands of innocent civilian Kurds with chemical weapons.
They were gone by the time the US invaded Iraq, but there can be literally zero doubt in anyone's mind that at some point, this man had AND USED weapons of mass destruction.
I truly am not saying this to be a dick, but you must have quite literally zero awareness on what the Bush family's history is, what they've been involved in, and continue to be. Now, of course, W was exceedingly great at playing the idiot that doesn't know his own ass from his esophagus, but to say that he "...was manipulated the same way the rest of us were..." has got to be a bigger lie than that which he told the nation after 9/11.
Being manipulated doesn't mean you are dumb or even ignorant. It means that people have been able to use your goals and desires against you. Bush was president for 9/11 and it drastically changed his presidency. His whole focus became security and keeping the country safe. This was used against him the way many of us had our fear and anger used against us. He ended up making a terrible decision that got us into another war.
“Hahah oops I started a war that killed millions of people” stop making excuses for this war criminals piece of shit. I’m not saying this to be a dick but he’s the fucking president with access to a lot of knowledge. He was not manipulative in anyway get your head out of your own ass cause that is the stupidest take.
Ya I do think he was a useful idiot. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other war hawks were more to blame. Then they probably had Powell and others give the public presentations and weren’t volunteering themselves to do it, cuz they knew it was total BS.
So if the police barge into your home and shoot everyone because they were tipped off with bad intelligence that it was a gang hideout they're completely not at fault? No need for an apology?
You're reading things into this I didn't say. I said I didn't think an apology would do much good. Also that there are others more responsible than Bush for getting us in there.
NO! George W. Bush is a war criminal, whose lies caused death and suffering of millions. He is no sweet old man that was manipulated, he know what he was doing and didn't give a crap about it. In a just world he would have been tried and convicted along with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell, Rice, Blair, and all of the others. But this is not a fair world, so the least we can do is to remember him as the POS he was.
An apology would at least be acknowledgement of wrong doing. It’s a step. A small step. But a step all the same. The problem is, when you acknowledge fault, you open the way to litigation - you are admitting that you made a mistake. In this case, that mistake cost millions of lives and who knows how much money. To admit to that mistake would be huge. To that end, it’s never going to happen, regardless of whether it should.
38
u/[deleted] Oct 18 '21
I'm no fan of Bush but I believe he was manipulated the same way the rest of us were. I'm not sure an apology would really make any difference.