When George Bush Smiles People Die

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/9959

When George Bush Smiles People Die
by Robert Weitzel | Sep 17 2007 - 9:52am


"(Bush’s) face seems to be involved in a somewhat painful, quasi-involuntary struggle to prevent itself from erupting into a broad, self-satisfied smile . . . a what-me-worry?"
- The New Yorker's Joe Klein


In a recent Associated Press photograph, President Bush flashes his “what-me-worry?” smile at the camera while shaking the hand of Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha. Abu Risha is not smiling, by the way. He is deadly earnest . . . or worried . . . or scared.

For the ex-Texas Ranger front man and glad hander, it was just another photo-op—one of the thousands he’s posed for and walked away from and forgotten about since 2001. For the sheik, it was a death warrant—a specialty of the ex-Texas Ranger and governor. But because of pressing business elsewhere in Iraq the Reaper was a short while in arriving.

snip//

Here’s the major rub. Being the president of the United States, currently the most influential nation on Earth, a nation with the might and resources to be either bully or benefactor, is not a sport, neither is it a party—political or frat house or whatever. It is a responsibility so grave that it’s hard to imagine a smile gracing the face of any sitting president who truly understands the gravity of their position. I’ve yet to see a picture of Abraham Lincoln with a “what-me-worry?” smile. He understood. George W. Bush never will.

Predictably though, Bush will walk away from his job of putting a happy frat boy face on neocon ideology and corporate conservatism and he will walk away—if not run—from the Iraq War and the blood on his hands as if they were no more than the dry oil wells he abandoned in Texas. He will begin a new career renting his smile and his ghostwritten “ah-shucks” speeches to any fundamentalist mega-church or right wing organization willing to meet his price.

Keep in mind that Bush will have had eight years at taxpayer expense and sacrifice and sorrow to perfect his shtick. He will be a pricy jester according Texas writer Robert Draper who asked him about life after leaving office, “I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers. I don’t know what my dad gets — it’s more than 50-75 thousand dollars a speech . . .” And he will not doubt smile his Texas-sized grin as he swaggers his way to the bank.

Keep in mind also the tens of thousands of wounded U.S. Iraqi War veterans who are not so much concerned with beginning a second career as they are with surviving one day to the next with whatever they have left of their bodies and minds. Be assured that their smiles, if there are many, will not be of the “what-me-worry?” variety made famous by their glad handing chicken-hawk Commander in Chief.

There may yet be a way to wipe the Texas-sized “what-me-worry?” smile off the mug of the Glad-hander in Chief. That would be impeachment. That would be justice. That would be something for the rest of us to smile about.

_______

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. why is Bush arranging a wedding while I have to arrange my son's funeral

that's what a mom said after her son died in Iraq

[babylonsister]

2. I remember; that was so sad but stark in its truth. nt

[Jim__]

3. I don't understand how anyone could vote for bush after seeing his adolescent smirk - n/t

[onehandle]

4. "Now watch this drive." nt