The Legacy - Democratic Underground

NanceGreggs

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Mon Jun-25-07 07:52 PM
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The Legacy

Edited on Mon Jun-25-07 08:02 PM by NanceGreggs

The Legacy
By Nancy Greggs

A few years ago, Bush was asked how he thought history would judge him. And he responded, “I won’t know, because I’ll be dead.”

It would seem obvious to anyone these days that Bush won’t have to wait until he’s dead after all – the nation, and the world, have already made it abundantly clear that history won’t have very many kind words to say about George. In fact, the man would have a hard time finding anyone to speak a kind word about him today, no less decades from now.

But to hear the neo-cons tell it (along with other various and sundry clueless idiots), history will prove that George W. Bush was a true visionary, sadly unrecognized in his own time as an intelligent, Christian man whose dreams of spreading democracy throughout the world will have by then proven to be an unqualified success.

Of course, the glaring hole in the Bush apologists’ theory is the fact that they, too, will be dead – in other words, as future generations look back on the GWB years, there won’t be anyone around to spin his behavior, his actions, his policies into something palatable.

There will be no one there to explain away his inability to speak coherently as down-home charm, or his lack of knowledge as due to his being just plain folk. There won’t be any bandying about of words like decisive leadership, or strength of purpose in attempt to describe what was in fact spineless adherance to the will of the PNAC puppetmasters.

In time, George W. Bush will instead be seen for what he is, and always has been: an arrogant buffoon whose disastrous policies cost millions of lives, a warmonger pretending to be a Christian as he tortured and killed, a thief who bankrupted his own country as he enriched those who aided and abetted his crimes against humanity and against his fellow citizens.

He will not be remembered as a liberator, but as a destroyer of nations – including, sadly enough, his own.

That will be the legacy of BushCo, one that George will share with people like Cheney and Rumsfeld, Rove and Rice – all of those who not only supported his insane policies, but put them into action.

But what of the others among us, those who stood by and did nothing and, through their inaction, allowed evil to flourish?

What of the politicians who sat in silence as the Bush administration usurped power that was never theirs, ignored the Constitution, curtailed the rights of the citizenry, and placed themselves above the law?

What of the so-called Christians who supported a presidency based on lies, torture, and unending violence against the innocent peoples of the world?

What of the media journalists of the day, who replaced any semblance of news reporting with endless chatter about celebrity gossip and the misadventures of runaway brides?

We live in the most-recorded era in history, and the historians of the future will have access to hours of footage of our brief moment in time.

One can only imagine that as they view it, as they trace the events that led to the demise of freedom in what was once the greatest democracy on the face of the earth at the hands of one man and his coterie of enablers, they will wonder not so much about the enormity of his crimes as the fact that he was allowed to get away with them.

Although I still support my party, I would just tell those who still insist that impeachment is off the table not to waste their time calling me in at suppertime. These days, I just don’t have an appetite for anything else.