The "disgraceful" treatment of G. W. Bush

The Wall Street Journal. Jeffrey Scott Shapiro. "The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace."


Mr. Shapiro, erstwhile defender of George W. Bush, writes that a whole bunch of folks in San Francisco petitioned to have a sewage plant named after George W. Bush. (Sounds good to me, but why give a sewage plant a bad name?)

Shapiro, though, is upset. This, he says, "is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president."

He says Bush's approval ratings are hovering just above basement level. And that "is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans."

It's all so sad. Poor Mr. Bush. His "bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties."

All right, stop laughing! Shapiro isn't done!

"It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything." Yup!

Shapiro, living in an alternative reality, whines on:

"The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

"Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House."

That must be why the entire world is dancing for joy over Obama's election and Bush's anticipated departure?


Do you suppose Mr. Shapiro made it through the 8th grade?

It's not just that what he says is insanely misguided, but that the opposite of what he says is true. The problem is not that Americans have treated Bush "disgracefully," but that Bush has treated this nation and its people disgracefully; it's that Mr. Bush has damn near destroyed the land of the free and the home of the brave.


To put it in the words of Joseph L. Galloway at McClatchy:

"They've [the Bush administration] squandered lives, fortunes and our sacred honor."

To be specific:

The Republican Party, under the leadership of President Bush, has "wrought - an economic meltdown, two endless wars, class warfare that's enriched the very rich and beggared everyone else and a treasury bulging with IOU's..."

Bush and his Party have, says Galloway, "...done everything they could to destroy the government and the Constitution that our forefathers so carefully constructed to check and balance any self-anointed monarch's ability to do evil or accumulate dangerous and excessive power. ...

"...our right to privacy has been whittled away, legally and illegally. Big Brother has been listening, but only for our own good. ...

"With the arrogance common to those who are ignorant of both history and the world, these people threw away our standing in that world, declaring that everyone must either be with us or against us. ...

"They demanded unfettered capitalism, and in the hands of the Wall Street robber barons that was turned into pure evil, pure greed and pure folly. Now millions of Americans are losing their homes in the mortgage meltdown, and millions more have seen their life savings, their 401ks and IRAs, their hopes of a comfortable retirement, blow away like so many leaves on a cruel Texas norther.

"They played on our fears like a mighty Wurlitzer Organ, frightening us with lies into an unnecessary war in Iraq. ...

"They frightened us so badly that we voluntarily surrendered the precious rights that a million American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen and others bought for us with their lives during two centuries of freedom and democracy.

"They used fear to violate international law, to torture and imprison thousands of suspected enemies without charges or trials. They used fear and invoked national security to suspend the right of habeas corpus, the foundation of our freedoms."


Galloway is absolutely right, but he didn't even touch on one of the most detrimental policies of the Bush administration -- the denial of global warming and the refusal to engage in any action which might deal effectively with what is rapidly becoming the major threat to the world's survival!

He didn't mention the failure of Bush and company to address the growing poverty in this, the richest nation on earth, or the unwillingness to provide health care to people who cannot afford it, or the shameless absorption of fundamentalist Christianity political goals into the policies of the Bush administration, thus disallowing stem cell research, and condom-distribution in AIDS-stricken Africa. This merging of church and state has also led to the infiltration of our military by christianist rightists, to a insane and belligerent stance toward Iran predicated on end-times theology, to a refusal to protect women's right to choose, to an assault on the rights of gays and lesbians.


As the Bush/Cheney administration winds down, the culprits face the nation with innocent blood dripping from their hands, and the entire world reels in pain, shocked by these madmen who have ruled the United States for nigh onto eight years. At this very moment, American soldiers are dying in far-off lands for no reason whatsoever, and innocent men, women and children lay eviscerated next to them, and the cries of the suffering rise to deities who have either turned away or are not there.


So, Mr. Shapiro, don't tell us that we have treated this president "disgracefully." Everything he has touched has turned toxic and, except for his wealthy cronies, the world has suffered in ungodly agony.

He and his friends are criminals, Mr. Shapiro! It is possible that they will eventually stand before the bar of justice and answer for their crimes.

You see, the word, "disgraceful," is an adjective describing President Bush.