The tweet links to a video of him saying this.
You’ve been ninja’d, friendo.
I had somehow forgotten how poor of a public speaker Dubya is/was.
No, I do not think Bush considered the 2003 invasion immoral when he did it, and I do not believe he considers it immoral in retrospect. I think he probably knows it was immoral the ways in which he knowingly trumped up some of the justifications for war, but I think he genuinely was drinking the neocon kool-aid. He knew Saddam was a shitty dictator and Iraq was under the regime of him, and he felt very much that an American crusade to gift them with the beneficence of American democratic ideals was an unabashed good. I think he probably struggled to easily articulate why this was a project for America to engage in, but he doubled down on the invasion multiple times in his Presidency, and he also wrote a book that I skimmed once post-Presidency about the “four key decisions” of his administration and he made a full-throated, unabashed defense of his invasion of Iraq. I think he will go to his grave firmly believing he did the right thing.
Did he know? He showed no indication that he cared if the invasion of Iraq was immoral. A willful disregard at a minimum.
I was wigged out by the fact that there is a “George W Bush Institute”. This clown has a ‘policy center’ when he didn’t actually have a coherent policy as chief executive other than letting Dick Cheney has his way with Iraq?
As President, Bush had plenary authority over the decision to invade Iraq (based on the most flimsy of premises) and military execution of executive orders. “Willful disregard” is below the minimum of responsibility for the titular Commander-In-Chief. Which not in any way justifies the Russian invasion of Ukraine but Bush is unable to judge from the moral high ground.
Stranger
The fact that he didn’t propose giving this “gift” to anyone else makes me doubt that, same as any other claim about the US “spreading democracy.” I suspect that, if there is a genuine belief there, it would be more about genuinely believing it was good for American interests to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
But, seeing as he admitted a personal hatred for the man, due largely to the Gulf War. I think it was more about seeing the opportunity with 9/11 to get rid of him. He has to tell himself that it would be good for the Iraqi people, too. That’s why he’s so adamant about it.
Then do not follow this link if you value your sanity.
I’m obviously no fan of Trump, but there are moments when I can’t help but be giddy that he destroyed the veneer of the presidency.
Because this stuff makes me so angry. The social club he’s in doesn’t really care about half a million dead Iraqis. It’s all just a game really, no need to get preoccupied with countless lives that were destroyed.
Yikes! SAN roll…failed; INT: roll under. Indefinite insanity:
Flee in panic: The investigator is compelled to get as far away as possible by whatever means are available, even if it means taking the only vehicle and leaving everyone else behind. They travel for 1D10 rounds.
But he paints…paintings and has a friendly relationship with Michelle Obama, so he’s a nice man who just did a bad thing once. Little harm, no foul, right?
Stranger
The fact that nobody is doing time for any of that should tell you all you need to know about the chances of Trump seeing the inside of a jail.
From a purely moral/humanitarian POV, Trumps crimes are arguably less bad than those of the Bush administration. We are still having fun with the direct consequences of those. It does not take a conspiracy theorist to draw lines from Iraq to Syria (and with a little indulgent reasoning those lines can be drawn to Kyiv.)
Bush appeared to be sacrificing his personal moral code so as to act freely in the interests of his nation. Textbook Machiavellianism, in other words. The reason we hate him so much is that he was utterly (almost purposefully) incurious as to whether the US has any national interests apart from stabilizing the petroleum market, as well as depressingly quick to make that tradeoff, and stubbornly resistant to change course in the face of fact.
I think he understands that the Iraq invasion didn’t go well, and that the public thinks he was immoral. He accepts the judgment of history, but is utterly baffled by it, because he’s a deeply stupid man whose only intellectual habit is to listen to rich people. And to be honest I think this bafflement has broken him a bit.
Even Kissinger was never prosecuted (and who would be doing so, and how would they get their hands on him in the first place?)
I am fully convinced that W went after Iraq for two reasons. First - His father started something there and did not ‘finish the job’. Second - Iraq tried to assassinate his father. I don’t remember that too well but something to do with bombing a helicopter, IIRC.
To clarify: the link in eschereal’s post refers to the “George H.W. Bush Center for Intelligence”, the name given to the CIA headquarters at Langley, VA. Bush was briefly CIA director in 1976-77 (and the only CIA director to become president).
So it’s not especially crazy to name the CIA headquarters complex after him, whatever one thinks of his presidency. Naming it after Dubya would indeed be ridiculous.
There is a George W Bush Center, which encompasses his presidential library that all ex-prez’s get, and is not affiliated with the CIA.
Whoops… didn’t see a post further down. Disregard this one.
OTOH, the Bush Center does advocate for sensible immigration reform, including having Dreamers apply for citizenship and increasing refugee support, as well as a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
They also try to advance access to the HPV vaccine in Africa (in addition to supporting PEPFAR to treat HIV/AIDS in Africa).
Basically continues to do the only two good things that happened in the Bush II administration.
FWIW it’s been discussed on these boards before, under actual U.S. law it would be very difficult to prosecute Bush for anything he did involving Iraq. Even under international law the charges you could level against him would be difficult to sustain because he is only really subject (very theoretically) to treaties the United States has agreed to, which there are some treaties we have specifically not signed for the obvious reasons.
We’ve discussed this before too–Kissinger is basically alleged of war crimes primarily related to a genocide in Indonesia, as it relates to advice he gave Nixon. It would be difficult under U.S. law or any international law to which America is treaty-obligated, to easily sustain charges against Kissinger, he was like 3 steps removed from the perpetrator (Indonesia’s government.)
Wow… senility is strong in that one!
And the people in the audience laughing… do they laugh out of pity, embarasment, schadenfreude? Or do they think what happened is funny?
It actually is funny in a way, I reckon.
I’m not sure he’s at all senile. He’s probably said ‘invasion of Iraq’ or ‘Iraq invasion’ several thousand times since 2003, so it’s not a surprising faux pas. He realized it was a doozy and tossed in ‘75’ afterwards, referring to his age.
Yeah, and he was always prone to verbal gaffes, which i think are mostly meaningless.
This one is just so perfect, though.