Tomgram: Bush's Free World and Welcome to It

[laststeamtrain]

Tomgram: Bush's Free World and Welcome to It

Freedom as Theft
Honoring American Liberators
By Tom Engelhardt

Let's take a trip down memory lane.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is America's highest civilian award, ranking second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor. According to its official website, the medal "is reserved for individuals the President deems to have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors." In 2004, George W. Bush had already awarded the medal to Estee Lauder, Arnold Palmer, Norman Podhoretz, and Doris Day, among others, when, on December 14 in a ceremony at the White House, he hit the trifecta.

Only the previous month, in a close race to the finish line -- not so much against opposing Presidential candidate John Kerry as against a ragtag fundamentalist insurgency in Iraq -- he had just slipped under the reelection wire and, in a press conference, promptly crowed about how "free" he was. ("You asked, do I feel free. Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.") The next month, he would launch his second term with an inaugural address that put "freedom" as a global mission at the very center of his presidency. He would grandiloquently promise nothing less than a crusade to end tyranny globally and bring liberty to the world. (He would, in fact, use the word "freedom" 27 times, and "liberty" 15 times, in that address.) He also had a few debts to pay and, having already brought "freedom" to Iraq at the point of a cruise missile, he now paid those debts in the coin of "freedom" as well. He slipped medals around the necks of three men -- each recently retired from the field of action -- who had been crucial to his first term "freedom" policies.

I'm talking here about the former commander of his Afghan War and Iraq invasion, General Tommy ("we don't do body counts") Franks; the former director of the CIA and proprietor of a global secret prison and torture network, as well as the man who oversaw the intelligence process that led to the Iraq invasion, George ("slam dunk") Tenet; and his former viceroy and capo in Baghdad, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul ("I didn't dismantle the Iraqi Army") Bremer III.

Of Franks, Bush said that the general had "led the forces that fought and won two wars in the defense of the world's security and helped liberate more than 50 million people from two of the worst tyrannies in the world."

Of Tenet, the President claimed that he had been "one of the first to recognize and address the threat to America from radical networks" and, after Sept. 11, was "ready with a plan to strike back at al Qaeda and to topple the Taliban."

Of Bremer, he offered this encomium: "For 14 months Jerry Bremer worked day and night in difficult and dangerous conditions to stabilize the country, to help its people rebuild and to establish a political process that would lead to justice and liberty." And the President added: "Every benchmark.... was achieved on time or ahead of schedule, including the transfer of sovereignty that ended his tenure." ("He did not add," the Washington Post pointed out at the time, "that the transfer was hurriedly arranged two days early because of fears insurgents would attack the ceremonies.")

Looking back, it's clearer just what kinds of "benchmarks" were achieved, what kinds of freedoms each of these men helped bring to the rest of the world.

<more>

http://www.tomdispatch.com/