| George Bush's words are so far off from reality that you need to hear them a couple of times before the full weight of their offensiveness sinks in. So it was with his endorsement of Donald Rumsfeld. "You are doing a superb job," Bush told him at the Pentagon, adding, "Our nation owes you a debt of gratitude.� A debt of gratitude? For what? For interfering with diplomacy left and right, as in "Old Europe"? For passing off bad intelligence on Iraq's phantom weapons of mass destruction? For sending too few troops into Iraq in the first place? For letting Iraqi looters ransack the national museum? For saying, "Stuff happens"? For throwing out the State Department's detailed guidebook on how to avoid problems during the occupation? For backing the convicted embezzler Ahmad Chalabi? And now for allowing widespread torture and abuse of prisoners in Iraq? For ignoring the warnings from the International Red Cross? And for having his top intelligence aide send a general to Iraq to instruct guards to "set the conditions" for "successful interrogation and exploitation"? For all this, all Americans should be grateful? For all this, Rumsfeld deserves a superb grade from the President? The world is watching to see whether the United States will show proper remorse for this grotesque scandal and whether someone in a position of authority will be held accountable. Lavishing praise on Rumsfeld is precisely the wrong signal to give. More than accountability, Bush prizes loyalty. And more than accountability, Rumsfeld prizes power. Power without accountability leads to the very kind of abuses we are witnessing today. Has the president undergone another conversion? If he truly and sincerely feels the pain inflicted by a few Americans on their Iraqi victims, will he follow up by acknowledging the Iraqis killed and maimed to advance the interests of Zionists and oil corporations? Will he also set up museums to commemorate the deaths of a million and a half Iraqi civilians killed in a previous American war that targeted their civilian infrastructure and followed it up with death-dealing sanctions? Is it just possible that at last the president will begin to recognize Palestinians as humans, and atone for the pain that he and his predecessors have inflicted on them for more than 50 years? Apart from the faithful, no one believes that the president's apology is sincere. In fact, it looks comical � comical because it is based on false premises. We are behaving as if the sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners is the first outrage inflicted by the United States on Muslims. It is unlikely that Muslims have forgotten, or soon will, the hundred lacerations inflicted upon them by America's conjugal embrace of the Israeli occupation, by its support for corrupt monarchies and dictatorships in the Islamic world, by the genocidal first Gulf war, by suffocating sanctions against Iraq that took the lives of three- quarters of a million Iraqi children, and by the routine demonization of Islam by preachers close to the present US administration. It is comical when a tormentor inflicts a hundred wounds on his victim and then sees it fit to apologize for stepping on his toes. George W. Bush calls himself Christian. If you believe him, he is on armchair-to-armchair relations with the Almighty, enjoying regular conversations with He Is What He Is on everything from tax policy to invasion plans. Bush serves a unique dual role as both the Commander in Chief and as high priest to the evangelical wing of American Christianity. Yet this is the same man who invades countries without cause and consigns tens of thousands of innocents to explosive, burning death. This is the same man who pushes matters of policy on Palestine together with his �peaceful� friend Sharon. He implements tax policies in the USA that further enrich the wealthy while stripping funds and services from the neediest in his nation. This is the man who speaks the language of vengeance, of fear, of violence. This is the man whose entire moral existence flies in the face of Christ's words from Luke, chapter 12, verse 15: "Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one's life does not consist of possessions." Sadly, the skewed moral compass of George W. Bush is shared by too many Americans who would call themselves Christian. |
| Bush's Lavish Praise on Rumsfeld |
| Nadhir Dean, USA, published 20 May 2004 |