Too Bad About The Kid ... - Democratic Underground

NanceGreggs

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Tue Nov-21-06 09:05 PM
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Too Bad About The Kid ...

Edited on Tue Nov-21-06 09:44 PM by NanceGreggs

Too Bad About The Kid
By Nancy Greggs

One might wonder if there is anything sadder than the father of an erstwhile child still making excuses for his child’s behaviour long after he becomes an adult. Well, there is; it’s when that man happens to be the father of the president of the United States.

In a moment of true shock and awe, George H.W. Bush stood on a stage in Abu Dhabi and attempted to defend the indefensible: the honesty, the integrity, and the leadership of his own son.

“My son is an honest man,” said the senior Bush, apparently unaware that his erstwhile child’s dishonesty about the existence of WMDs in Iraq, Saddam’s alleged ties to the attacks of 9-11, mobile chemical labs, yellow cake from Niger – the entire fallacy that led a country to war in Iraq – is a horse that is not only long out of the barn, but one that has since circumnavigated the globe.

“He is working hard for peace.” Again, Bush Senior seems to be totally ignorant of the fact that the current chaos in Iraq is a far cry from working towards peace. Maybe father, like son, just doesn’t grasp the concept that when you destroy a nation’s infrastructure, its schools and universities, its hospitals – things that all existed before the Grand Liberation – and then proceed to kill, maim and torture its citizens on a regular basis, chances are you’re going to be perceived as being a little less than sincere about peaceful intentions.

Perhaps Bush-41 is just too busy counting the money he’s made working towards that “peace” to notice – especially when you consider that the more remote the peace, the more money there is to be made.

“It takes a lot of guts to get up and tell a father about his son in those terms,” Senior fired back at a jeering audience, “when I just told you the thing that matters in my heart is my family." I don’t think those comments from the audience were so much “guts” as savvy. After all, reminding a father that his son – a man responsible for over 600,000 Iraqi deaths, almost 3,000 US troop casualties, and unprecedented unrest in the Middle East which has led to increased anti-American sentiment world-wide – is a complete screw-up is a fact so abundantly obvious, it hardly takes an Einstein to reiterate that not-so-late-breaking news.

"When your son's under attack, it hurts. You're determined to be at his side and help him any way you possibly can." Ah, there’s the quote of the century. Senior doesn’t like it when his son is under attack. I guess he just hasn’t had the time to think about all the other sons (and daughters) of Americans under attack in Baghdad or the deserts of Afghanistan, whose parents are more than ‘hurt’, especially when that child comes home in a body-bag.

Maybe Senior should outfit his son in some body armour to protect against the jibes – while the kids he’s sent into combat without armour against bullets continue to fend for themselves.

Of course, Senior felt it necessary to remind the audience that, “This son is not going to back away." I suppose if I had a kid who had “backed away” from the cushiest possible military service, as well as every failed business venture he’d ever been involved in, I’d want to try and shore up his credibility, too.

Too bad the entire civilized world has access to the truth of Junior’s inability to actually “accomplish” any “mission” he’s ever embarked upon.

As for Senior’s comment that “you can't be president of the United States and conduct yourself if you're going to cut and run,” what a shame those films of the aftermath of Katrina are still so widely available, so widely viewed.

Senior’s total failure to appreciate the derision, disrespect, and out-and-out hatred that is felt towards his son is astounding in its ‘bubble-boy” mentality – like father, like son? – and his responses, while anger-provoking in their abject ignorance of the facts, are something more than bewildering; they are truly pathetic.

In what should have been his Golden Years, spent at the golf course secure in the knowledge that his children had all moved on to make their mark as mature adults, Senior is still the humiliated Dad, hemming and hawing at parent-teachers night about how Junior will really make an effort to get his homework done on time, still shuffling on the neighbor’s doorstep, check in hand, offering to pay for the damage his Sonny Boy did to the front window, still explaining to the exasperated police office that this kind of reckless driving incident won’t happen again.

It’s a sad state of affairs when a father, who wants to take the usual pride in a son’s accomplishments, instead has to continue to apologize – not to the neighborhood, but the world – for the mistakes of his sixty-year-old “kid”, who has managed to not only destroy the country he so foolishly invaded, but the country he was sadly permitted to lead.

If only Poppy had instilled some sense of empathy, some sense of responsibility, some sense that there were consequences to one’s actions, perhaps Junior would have been a better man – and the world would be a better, safer, more peaceful place.