Bob Geldof has written a nice piece about his time on Air Force One with the President, traveling to and around Africa. It’s probably the most complimentary piece I’ve read about Bush since Hurricane Katrina wiped out the last of his unapologetic apologists. And, yet, even in the midst of praising Bush for his generosity to Africa, Geldof tells us:
I don’t know how, but eventually we arrive at the great unspoken. “See, I believe we’re in an ideological struggle with extremism,” says the President. “These people prey on the hopeless. Hopelessness breeds terrorism. That’s why this trip is a mission undertaken with the deepest sense of humanity, because those other folks will just use vulnerable people for evil. Like in Iraq.”
I don’t want to go there. I have my views and they’re at odds with his, and I don’t want to spoil the interview or be rude in the face of his hospitality. “Ah, look Mr. President. I don’t want to do this really. We’ll get distracted and I’m here to do Africa with you.” “OK, but we got rid of tyranny.” It sounded like the television Bush. It sounded too justificatory, and he doesn’t ever have to justify his Africa policy. This is the person who has quadrupled aid to the poorest people on the planet. I was more comfortable with that. But his expression asked for agreement and sympathy, and I couldn’t provide either.
“Mr. President, please. There are things you’ve done I could never possibly agree with and there are things I’ve done in my life that you would disapprove of, too. And that would make your hospitality awkward. The cost has been too much. History will play itself out.” “I think history will prove me right,” he shoots back. “Who knows,” I say.
It wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t uncomfortable. He is convinced, like Tony Blair, that he made the right decision. “I’m comfortable with that decision,” he says. But he can’t be. The laws of unintended consequences would determine that. At one point I suggest that he will never be given credit for good policies, like those here in Africa, because many people view him “as a walking crime against humanity.” He looks very hurt by that. And I’m sorry I said it, because he’s a very likable fellow.
I’m sure that Bush was hoping for a good interview, and on the whole, the Geldof piece is positive. Unfortunately, the man is a ‘walking crime against humanity’. It’s funny because Geldof never would have had the balls to say something like that to Idi Amin, Pol Pot, or Saddam Hussein. It’s important to ruminate on what it is that distinguishes one mass killer from another. What are unintended consequences for those that order war? And what are we to think of this?
Then, in what I took to be a reference to the supposed Chinese influence over the cynical Khartoum regime, Bush adds, “One thing I will say: Human suffering should preempt commercial interest.”
It’s a wonderful sentence, and it comes in the wake of a visit to Rwanda’s Genocide Memorial Center. The museum is built on the site of a still-being-filled open grave. There are 250,000 individuals in that hole, tumbled together in an undifferentiated tangle of humanity. The President and First Lady were visibly shocked by the museum. “Evil does exist,” Bush says in reaction to the 1994 massacres. “And in such a brutal form.” He is not speechifying; he is horror-struck by the reality of ethnic madness. “Babies had their skulls smashed,” he says, his mind violently regurgitating an image he has just witnessed. The sentence peters out, emptied of words to describe the ultimately incomprehensible.
Does an experience like this have the potential to change a man like Bush, even at this late stage of his life? Can such a visible witness to what otherwise remains abstract statistics (600,000 dead in Iraq, for example) stir some sense of dread in Bush’s soul? ‘I, too, have filled pits like these.’ Does it even matter if that is what he intended to do?
What a dreadful legacy this man built. And to try to face his demons sober? What maintains his wall of denial? Evil does exist, as Bush says, and in such a banal form.
Which call’s to mind:
that’s a good quote from the bard. Also apt:
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i don’t care what the monster thinks about himself. I hope he goes insane with guilt and lives a long time.
Bush’s most ironic comment of all time:
“One thing I will say: Human suffering should preempt commercial interest.”
Ahem. Cough. Cough.
“Except when commercial interest benefits me or my buddies. Then it’s the other way around. Heh-heh.”
Or, maybe he meant the ability to create human suffering is first and foremost and the commercial goodies just follow along naturally.
Yeah, that line was amazing.
that’s the line that caught me too. The extreme contradiction is Bush’s legacy on Katrina.
Very sobering. The last month or so I’ve been following the primaries much like I follow sports, which has been aided by the fact that my two favorites (football and baseball) don’t do much for most of Feb. Bush had become sort of like the Yankees, and I had nearly forgotten how much he really is on a totally different level than the rival you root against because your team slugs it out with them every year, not because they’re “walking crimes against humanity.”
It’s also interesting that what Bush seemingly genuinely indicated in that interview is that he personally, sincerely thinks the war was about getting rid of tyranny. If his motives had been cynical, it doesn’t seem to me that he would have been trying to convince the interviewer of that when that was not the topic. I do think that others in the admin did have very cynical motives, but I had never felt like I had a good reason for believing one way or the other on the question of how much Bush was the idiot fool being played by Cheney et al., versus a fully or nearly fully informed and consenting co-conspirator.
Bush doesn’t face his demons sober.
I have no doubt he’s drinking. He slurs his words and is incomprehensible half the time. After he is out of office a year or so the stories will start trickling out and we will really find out how the press has betrayed us.
Watch him REAL close some time. The guy’s a drunk.
nalbar
You got that right. Some of his verbal exchanges remind me of a guy in a bar trying to convince his buddies of something. Check out his speechifying as governor of Texas vs. the last few years. It’s either booze and/or drugs (legal or illegal) or some kind of physical degeneration related to prior chemical abuse.
well, I have no doubt that he at least tries, and that is what I wrote.
It is a post like this that justifies my daily return. BRAVO! Boo. Simply——– BRAVO!
Boo, your post left me with a gigantic hole where my stomach used to be. Excellent.
People who do evil do not ever think of themselves as evil. James Bond/comic book villains who revel in their badness rarely exist in real life. The seeming fact that Bush does not know how evil he is does not gain my sympathy. It just makes him look more stupid.
I think we have to remember the source of Bush’s brand of evil. I don’t think Bush is evil. I think he’s a pathetic pawn.
The real architect of his admin is Cheney and those that think like Cheney.
Bush’s evil stems from the fact that he doesn’t think for himself. So, I am not at all surprised that getting involved with Africa might open his eyes a little bit.
I will admit that incidents like Karla Faye Tucker (his first act that really set me against him) will bear thinking on.. but even if he’s evil I think it’s important to remember that he’s still a man.. and that no one is fully and completely evil.
I had diaried this interview yesterday as well, and it left me with this impression:
Its all too easy to think of Bush as a war criminal presiding over a huge criminal enterprise, because, well, its true. But its weird to touch on the fact that human monsters, intentional or accidental, are real human beings, too.
Bush has had a gilded life. He has never had to face the consequences of his actions and therefore he’s never had to face the realities of his world view. When Bush failed in his business ventures his family connections provided a backstop–he didn’t have to declare bankruptcy or suffer professionally, quite the opposite really, he was given a very large golden parachute. Bush also has had his troubles with drugs and alcohol and did not have to suffer the legal and other consequences that many addicts suffer. Also, Bush was able to avoid the Vietnam war, a war he supported, while less well connected young men were sent to fight and die.
One can’t help but wonder how differently Bush’s world view would be if he was allowed to hit bottom like an average man. He failed in business, he avoided a war that his compatriots couldn’t avoid, and he had an addiction problem. Most people would be humbled by these events.
So it’s no wonder that Bush only sees the good in his conservative policies. I have no doubt Bush sincerely thinks his conservatism policies are compassionate (in a tough love way). But Bush has not lived his principles–he’s lived a rigged game where his “successes” are amplified and his failures are swept under the rug for him.