(One America Blog) "The True Legacy of George W. Bush"

[Catchawave]

http://blog.oneamericacommittee.com/story/2006/5/25/124046/084

posted by dpfabie in Arguments & Analyses
5/26/2006 at 11:11 EST

I remember the day like it was just yesterday. June 12th, 1987. I was a 17 year-old exchange student in Germany. Standing there at the Berlin Wall watching the President of the United States state in words so clear, so commanding that they seemed to reverberate through the crowd like an electric current.

"Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

An elderly man standing near me in the crowd saw I was an American, tapped me on the arm, asked if I spoke German, and when I said yes, he pointed towards the podium and said "only the American President could say that and mean it." It wasn't until days later back in Munich I asked the grandfather in my German host family what he thought the man meant by that.

He explained to me at the end of World War II German soldiers were fleeing westward with one goal in mind: Escape the advancing Soviet troops and surrender to the Americans. It was a known fact that the Americans would treat captured enemy combatants in accordance with the Geneva Convention and if you were caught by anyone else you were taking your chances. It gave America a moral authority in the post war world that the Soviets didn't have.

It was "moral capital" that gave successive American Presidents from Truman to Clinton the ability to stand before the world, demand justice, speak for freedom lead the world and mean it.....cont'd

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Here is his legacy.....

[Pierre Trudeau]

2. great article... even the Reagan stuff

I never cared much for Pres. Reagan myself, but I know a lot of Americans do, so if it helps make the point, hey I'll give him the credit.

Also you have to like the unfavourable comparisons to Bush Sr. I never liked him either, but at least he was a real president, not make-believe.

And somehow he even manages to mention Gerald Ford.
:crazy:

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. What a load of horseshit

Only an American could have written that. Everyone else in the world would laugh at the notion of America's moral capital just now disintegrating. Ridiculous jingoism and stupidity.

[Catchawave]

4. GWB has no moral captial....

more from the article......

That presidential moral authority, that capital, that faith in America as the nation that does what is right, has been destroyed by George W. Bush. The pictures from Abu-Ghraib prison, the cherry picking of intelligence, the acts of retaliation to silence critics all take that great American legacy of doing what was right, and tear it to shreds.

Rather than lead with the moral authority stemming from generations of American soldiers and leaders doing what was right. We have a President of the United States who has to attack Amnesty International, ridicule the United Nations and insult traditional allies all to avoid admitting his own massive mistakes. Failures such as claims in the State of the Union Address, that have to be "re examined" when they turn out to be completely false. Now we find when the President of the United States needs most to enlist the help and support of the global community, the best he can do is; "You are either with us or you are with the terrorists." .......

Where's the B.S.?

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. The BS resides in the Golden Age nonsense

that attributes some wealth of moral capital to pre-GWB American foreign policy. American foreign policy since the Second World War has been a series of atrocities, self-interested maneuvers, and corrupt, murderous machinations. The notion tht we were some beacon of goodness before GWB came along is at best an illusion, and more likely Jingo on Display.