7 6 April 2017
INTERNATIONAL
Rehabilitating George W is possible only
because Trump makes all his predecessors
look good
by Patrick Horan
Bush’s book of
his paintings of
servicemen,‘Portraits
of Courage’currently
sits atop theNew York
Timesbestsellers list
Brushstrokes
of a war criminal
D
ONALD TRUMP conjures such intense images
that it is difficult to frame recollections of a
man who made him all possible. What memo-
ries flood back in your mind’s eye when you
think of his Republican predecessor? Weapons
of Mass Destruction? That awful expression, like a ghost
stirring at the back of your mind? Perhaps you smile?
Cringe? Do you imagine him as the strong president stand-
ing amid the rubble of the World Trade Center, bullhorn in
hand, shouting that "the people who knocked these build-
ings down will hear all of us soon"? Perhaps as the
struggling guy-next-door mispronouncing words like
'nuclear'? Or perhaps as the most powerful man in the
world giving a press conference in Baghdad in the waning
hours of his presidency, ducking at the last minute while
a shoe, thrown by an Iraqi journalist, sails past his head?
The man who smashed international law and the Con
-
stitution of the United States has recently been feted by
even ‘liberal’ television talk-show hosts like Jimmy Kimmel
and Ellen De Generes. It doesn’t matter; it’s all in the past.
Shush! Marvel at his nice paintings, almost professional!
Bush’s book of his paintings of servicemen, ‘Portraits of
Courage’ currently sits atop the New York Times bestsell
-
ers list. Was there never a moment, in the words of Gore
Vidal, when television's cold, distorting eye was not
relentlessly projecting a funhouse view of the world?
"Pleikus" declared McGeorge Bundy, Lyndon Johnson's
National Security Advisor, "are like streetcars. Wait long
enough and one will come sooner or later". Bundy was
referring to an incident during the Vietnam War when
enemy soldiers attacked a poorly defended US military
base in Pleiku, Central Vietnam. It was the pretext for Pres-
ident Johnson escalating the war in Vietnam, with
disastrous results.
Bush’s ‘Pleiku Incident’ was without doubt 9/11. In the
18 months after this attack, Bush set the US down a long
road of unilateralism and ambivalence to international law
and treaties. His administration declared the doctrine of
“preventive war” and designated suspects captured in the
War on Terror as “enemy combatants” - concepts unknown
under international law. At the time of
its establishment in January 2002,
Secretary of Defense Donald Rums
-
feld said Guantanamo was established
to detain extraordinarily dangerous
people, to interrogate detainees in an
optimal setting, and to prosecute
detainees for war crimes. In reality,
the site has long been used for indefi-
nite detention without trial.
The first international treaty to sense the acrid cigar-
breath was the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Signed with
the Soviet Union in 1972 to ease Cold War tensions, Bush
signalled his unilateral - in other words unlawful - intent
to withdraw from it in December, 2001. Worse was to
follow. Adrift now, Bush then declared in May, 2002 that
the US was no longer bound by the 1969 Vienna Conven
-
tion on the Law of Treaties which governs treaties between
states.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a permanent
court, founded in 2002 by the Rome Statute to "bring to
justice the perpetrators of the worst crimes known to
humankind – war crimes, crimes against humanity, and
genocide", especially when national courts are unable or
unwilling to do so, was next on the chopping board.
Signed by President Clinton in December, 2000, Bush then
took the astonishing step of retroactively un-signing it in
May, 2002. The institution clearly panicked Bush, espe
-
cially given what direction he knew US foreign policy
would shortly take him and his buddies. Petrified of inad-
vertently doing something which might be construed as
US acknowledgement of the ICC, Bush even barred US dip-
lomat Richard Holbrooke from attending the court to give
expert evidence in the trial of Serbian warlord, Slobodan
Milosevic. This act alone ought to have warned everyone
that even then Bush was dreaming of war and was taking
steps to ensure that neither he nor any of his cronies could
ever be hauled under the court's scrupulous gaze. To make
doubly sure, in August, 2002 Bush signed the American
Services Members Protection Act which authorised the US
April 2017 7 7
to use force to free any member of its armed ser-
vices arrested and detained at The Hague for war
crimes. The Dutch government dubbed this the
Netherlands Invasion Act.
The bellicosity only increased. In November,
2002, furious that the international community
would not support his Iraq war Bush issued an
ultimatum: if the UN wouldn’t take action against
Iraq, the US would, thus shredding international
law which since 1946 had required that the UN
Security Council issue a Resolution in favour of
war before it could be initiated.
Enemies now seemed to be everywhere, chief
among them North Korea. The combined delicate
efforts of both South Korea and Bill Clinton
during the 1990s to bring North Korea in from the
cold were blithely jettisoned as soon as Bush
took office. Bush publicly declared that he
"loathed Kim Jong Il" and that North Korea was
now part of the 'Axis of Evil', alongside Iraq and
Iran. Predictably alarmed, North Korea then
withdrew from Nuclear Non-Proliferation talks
and ejected weapons inspectors in January,
2003. When war came to Saddam in March, the
North drew the obvious conclusion: the only way
to deter the Americans was to acquire nuclear
weapons.
The catastrophic 'Shock and Awe' invasion of
Iraq premised on the lie that Iraq possessed
weapons of mass destruction generated the
human horror of up to a million civilian deaths.
When Iraqis rebelled against the invasion the
US reacted with torture as in Abu Ghra’ib and
massive violence in, for example, Fallujah and
exploited sectarian divi-
sions to maintain its
fading power. The United
Nations Special Rappor-
teur on torture, Professor
Manfred Nowak,
remarked on German tel-
evision in January 2009
that Bush had lost his
head of state immunity
and under international
law and that the US could
start criminal proceed-
ings against all those involved in these
violations of the UN Convention Against Tor
-
ture. It was a minority view, or at least a view
that was in the minority amonth those in a posi-
tion to do anything, A largely untold scandal
was the destruction of an ancient culture and
heritage in Iraq, the cradle of civilisation.
Shortly after the invasion in the 6,000-year-old
city of Ur The Observer reported that US marines
had spray-painted their motto Semper-Fi
('always faithful') onto the side of the city's
massive 4,100-year-old temple and then
declared the temple off-limits to everyone in
order to disguise their desecration, including
the theft by US soldiers of ancient clay bricks
used in the construction of the temple.
Law and order completely broke down. In
Baghdad in April, 2003 the National Museum
was looted of its treasures and both the National
Library and Archives and the Library of Korans
were burned to the ground while US marines,
only feet away watched on
and did nothing. Eleanor
Robson, a fellow of All
Souls College, Oxford said:
"You'd have to go back cen
-
turies, to the Mongol
invasion of Baghdad in
1258, to find looting on this
scale". Secretary of State,
Donald Rumsfeld, shrugged
off the rampant destruction
of ancient monuments by
saying "stuff happens" and
then joking that he did not believe that there
really were that many ancient vases in Iraq. By
contrast, the Iraqi Oil Ministry, located in the
centre of the city next to the burned down muse-
ums, was secured almost immediately when US
army experts were dispatched to secure and
examine the Oil Ministry's records.
The New Statesman comments: “The transi-
tion from idiot to lovable idiot is not a huge leap,
aided by complex human psychology that means
we find old people cute, as well as the fact
Michelle Obama – who is beloved by many
online – has been pictured embracing him
fondly.
F . Scott Fitzgerald once said that he had
thought that there were no second acts in Ameri-
can life. Usually the lack of nuance in American
public life precludes useful reinvention. It is
Bush’s good fortune that he only person who
could make him look of any continuing use, suc-
ceeded him.
Signed by President
Clinton in December,
2000, Bush took the
astonishing step of
retroactivelyun-signing
the Statute of the
International Criminal
Courtin May, 2002
7 8 April 2017
C
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2014-04-03-Village-Ad-HighRes.ai 1 03/04/2014 20:32

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