Bush's legacy is America's shame

[babylonsister]

Bush's legacy is America's shame
Although Americans would be wary of admitting it to others, we know the wreckage left behind by the outgoing administration.
Michael Tomasky


Artists and geniuses, and titans of commerce and global affairs, actively leave legacies. Beethoven reinvented the symphony, Picasso jolted us into abstraction. Gandhi taught us nonviolent resistance, and Bill Gates came up with the chip. Towering figures all. Legacies, immutable and eternal.

But we use "legacy" in a second sense, do we not? Chernobyl, for instance, has a legacy: UN-led efforts to reduce nuclear fallout. Here in the US, a notable example is that of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan in 1911, in which 146 garment workers either died in the flames or jumped to their deaths, which helped propel certain reforms and the broader American trade union movement.

Tragedies don't actively leave legacies, but rather legacies are created out of their ashes. And this is the context – the only context – in which we must think about the legacy of blessedly exiting administration of George W Bush.

Am I being unfair? Is there not even one positive thing to say? OK. It was nice the other day, in fact quite nice, that Bush announced new protections for 195,280 square miles of American-controlled Pacific islands, reefs, surface waters and sea floor. That was well done. Bully.
But the world the Bushies tried to create – the legacy, that is, they attempted to leave has virtually nothing to recommend it. Even they know it. Vice-President Dick Cheney, in an exit interview with one of the last remaining friendly media outlets in the US (the Reverend Moon-owned Washington Times), said: "I'm personally persuaded that this president and this administration will look very good 20 or 30 years down the road in light of what we've been able to accomplish."

Now, let's parse why he said that. He knew he couldn't say with a straight face: "We've been incredibly successful and leave office with our heads held high." Even the man who said in May 2005 that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes" couldn't pull that one off. At the same time, Cheney and other defenders can't say: "Well, we blew it, we screwed a lot of things up." The admission would be refreshing of course, but it isn't done.

So they are left with this stab in the dark. Bush's defenders surely know that even this scenario is bloody unlikely. But, you know, it could happen. So it's worth putting the spin on the record, just in case it does.

more...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/18/usa-georgebush-obama

[Baby Snooks]

1. But they have been successful...

And one measure of that success is their remaining at the table.