Published on Friday, January 30, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
George Bush’s Gift To The World: The End of American Imperialism
by David Michael Green
George W. Bush was unquestionably the worst American president in the two and a quarter centuries of the country's existence.
After all, James Buchanan, the previous aspirant to the title, merely did nothing while the South seceded. Hah! You'll have to do better than that, Jimmy, if you want to wear this crown!
Bush did far better, of course. It would appear to be the one thing in his entire life he actually worked hard at, and the one challenge he was able to meet successfully. This was an astonishingly destructive presidency, that's true even despite the fact that we don't really know much about his administration, because in addition to being the worst, it was also the most secretive ever. (I'm sure that's just a coincidence, too.) Moreover, that's also even considering that most Americans still vastly underestimate the depravity of Team Bush. As I have argued previously, if you think they were ‘merely' arrogant bunglers with exceptionally bad politics, you've grossly underestimated them. In fact, they were predators who launched their class warfare agenda behind the smoke-screen of national security, faux patriotism and secret government.
George Bush left us many gifts, but perhaps the greatest of them is that he has ruined the sport of imperialism in America, maybe forever.
Iraq is probably not the last time America will go to war. But I think it's fair to say that this country - its nose once more bloodied by a stupid imperial adventure, stupidly prosecuted - will be that much more reticent to repeat the experience. We do learn in America. It is often a painfully slow process, sometimes punctuated by reverse trajectories (can you say ‘creation science'), but we do occasionally exhibit the classic clinical signs of a student who can be taught, however reluctantly and inadvertantly.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/30-1