The father is hurt by criticism of his son:

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates – Former President George H.W. Bush took on Arab critics of his son Tuesday during a testy exchange at a leadership conference in the capital of this U.S. ally.

“My son is an honest man,” Bush told members of the audience harshly criticized the current U.S. leader’s foreign policy.

The oil-rich Persian Gulf used to be safe territory for former President Bush, who brought Arab leaders together in a coalition that drove
Saddam Hussein’s troops from Kuwait in 1991. But gratitude for the elder Bush, who served as president from 1989-93, was overshadowed at the conference by hostility toward his son, whose invasion of Iraq and support for Israel are deeply unpopular in the region.

“We do not respect your son. We do not respect what he’s doing all over the world,” a woman in the audience bluntly told Bush after his speech.

Bush, 82, appeared stunned as others in the audience whooped and whistled in approval.

A college student told Bush his belief that U.S. wars were aimed at opening markets for American companies and said globalization was contrived for America’s benefit at the expense of the rest of the world. Bush was having none of it.

“I think that’s weird and it’s nuts,” Bush said. “To suggest that everything we do is because we’re hungry for money, I think that’s crazy. I think you need to go back to school.”

It’s almost amusing for former DCI George Herbert Walker Bush to get huffy when someone suggests the United States’ polices in the Middle East are driven by greed. A country that is $8,613,185,234,573.26 dollars in debt is not hungry for money? Why did we install the Shah in Iran in 1953 if not to keep “open markets for American [and British] companies”? I mean, let’s get serious:

With the establishment during World War II of a small United States military mission to the Gendarmerie (known as GENMISH) in 1943, Washington initiated a modest military advisory program. In 1947 the United States and Tehran reached a more comprehensive agreement that established the United States Army Mission Headquarters (ARMISH). Its purpose was to provide the Ministry of War and the Iranian army with advisory and technical assistance to enhance their efficiency. As a result, the first Iranian officers began training in the United States, and they were followed by many more over the next three decades. The United States initiated its military assistance grant program to Iran in 1950 (the bilateral defense agreement between Iran and the United States was not concluded until 1959) and established a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) to administer the program. In 1962 the two missions were consolidated into a single military organization, ARMISH-MAAG, which remained active in Iran until the Islamic revolutionary regime came to power in 1979. Between 1973 and 1979, the United States also provided military support in the form of technical assistance field teams (TAFTs), through which civilian experts instructed Iranians on specific equipment on a short-term basis. Although the GENMISH program ended in 1973, United States military assistance to Iran rose rapidly in the six years before the Revolution.

United States military assistance to Iran between 1947 and 1969 exceeded US$1.4 billion, mostly in the form of grant aid before 1965 and of Foreign Military Sales credits during the late 1960s. The financial assistance programs were terminated after 1969, when it was determined that Iran, by then an important oil exporter, could assume its own military costs. Thereafter, Iran paid cash for its arms purchases and covered the expenses of United States military personnel serving in the ARMISH-MAAG and TAFT programs. Even so, in terms of personnel the United States military mission in Iran in 1978 was the largest in the world. Department of Defense personnel in Iran totaled over 1,500 in 1978, admittedly a small number compared with the 45,000 United States citizens, mostly military and civilian technicians and their dependents, living in Iran. Almost all of these individuals were evacuated by early 1979 as the ARMISH-MAAG program came to an abrupt end. Ended also was the International Military Education and Training (IMET) Program, under which over 11,000 Iranian military personnel had received specialized instruction in the United States.

Washington broke its diplomatic ties with Tehran in April 1980, closing an important chapter with a former CENTO ally whose security it had guaranteed since 1959. The relationship had evolved dramatically from the early 1950s, when Iran depended on the United States for security assistance, to the mid-1970s, when the government-to-government Foreign Military Sales program dominated other issues. Arms transfers increased significantly after the 1974 oil price rise, accelerating at a dizzying pace until 1979. From fiscal year 1950 through FY 1979, United States arms sales to Iran totaled approximately US$11.2 billion, of which US$10.7 billion were actually delivered.

You know what happened in 1974? Donald Rumsfeld became the Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney became Gerald Ford’s chief-of-staff, and Bush became Chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in the People’s Republic of China. In 1976, Bush became DCI. Like I said, it’s amusing to see Bush get huffy when someone suggests the United States’ policies in the Middle East are not exactly altruistic.